


Chasm

by SkyisGray



Series: Ipseity [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dishonesty, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of self-harm, Mentions of torture and sexual assault, Negative self-image of mental illness, Post CATWS, Stucky - Freeform, Switching Points of View
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:06:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 77,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyisGray/pseuds/SkyisGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve pulls his missing, presumed dead best friend into his circle of super heroes and starts working to undo the physical and mental damage Hydra has done.  </p><p>It’s not easy, and it’s not pleasant.  But it would probably be a lot more effective if Bucky weren’t keeping secrets, and if he could figure out how to interpret Bucky’s mood swings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Invalid

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  This is the sequel to Chyetirye, and it presumes that you’ve read that story. If the torture and non-con tags weren’t your cup of tea, however, I’m going to do a “Here’s what you missed last week in Ipseity": 
> 
> Bucky survives his fall from the train thanks to the knockoff super soldier serum he received while Zola’s prisoner, and he’s captured by a joint Department X/Hydra science division. He’s abused and neglected while under Karpov’s care, and he (and his captors) gradually become aware that he’s not always himself. They learn that Bucky has developed an alternate persona known as Axel, a crafty German prisoner. 
> 
> Bucky/Axel is transferred to the Red Room, a division of Department X, and Lukin realizes that Bucky is immune to the brainwashing techniques that should turn him into an obedient soldier. Instead, he tortures Bucky with the intent of creating a third personality which can be ‘raised’ into the perfect Soviet super soldier. Yasha isn’t what they expect, however, because he’s pacifistic and naïve, so they use the same techniques to create a fourth personality. When the asset emerges, he scares everyone, including Lukin and Bucky. 
> 
> The personalities develop ways of communicating in their mind, and they grow and influence each other through the decades. They all share an affinity for Steve, even the asset, and they start to work together to achieve common goals. They’re sold back to Hydra when the Soviet Union falls, and they come to America under the mysterious persona of the Winter Soldier. Learning that Steve is still alive changes everything, and they make a push for freedom to watch over him and protect him from Hydra. 
> 
> Bucky and Steve gradually come closer to reuniting, but Bucky fights against it, believing that he needs to protect Steve from the blood on his hands and the taint in his mind. Before they can take back ground in their relationship, however, Bucky’s damaged metal arm starts to fail, and blood poisoning sets in from the broken and malfunctioning metal pieces in his body. 
> 
> AND for those of you who are returning readers, I’m humbled and excited to see you back. So…here’s some story for ya. 
> 
> Thanks to Ash for looking over this chapter!

“Okay, we’re bringing him in!” someone’s voice calls out.  Steve thinks that he knows the agent’s name, but his brain skips over it like a faulty needle that won’t read the damn record.  He distantly knows that he should feel bad for forgetting the man’s name, and even worse for not caring. 

A light flashes over the metal door before it starts to roll upwards.  There’s about a dozen agents around Steve right now, and they’re all pointing their weapons at the door before they even see the vehicle behind it.  Steve’s the only one in the prison bay without a firearm.  Instead, his hands are clenching the metal railing that separates the visitors’ area from the receiving zone.  He hears the metal crunch as it compresses under his fingertips, but no one seems to notice. 

The door clears the height for an armored SUV to enter, and every eye in the bay is trained on the black vehicle as it pulls in.  Its side windows are tinted, and the driver’s face is the only one that Steve can see through the front window.  It rolls to a stop, and then the bay holds a collective breath as the engine softly dies. 

“Codename Winter Soldier has arrived in SHIELD prison bay 4.  Remove prisoner and begin intake procedures,” the agent commands, and the doors open.  Four more agents swarm out of the vehicle and move to the back, where there’s a modified human cargo gate.  A minute later, Steve sees movement at the back of the vehicle, and then Bucky is rounding the side and walking toward him. 

There are fourteen guns pointed at Bucky right now.  He’s wearing vibranium-enforced handcuffs despite the fact that SHIELD knows his metal arm is broken and painful.  And while he looks filthy and ragged, his oily hair falling into his face and his dirty fingernails digging into his palm, he also looks tired and hurt and so, so vulnerable. 

Steve’s stomach churns at the security. 

“Really, guys, is this necessary?” he asks, swinging over the railing and moving to walk with Bucky’s guards.  One of them holds a hand out to stop him, and Bucky lunges for the man, growling and spitting. 

A cacophony of yells ring out in the high-ceilinged room, and Steve grabs Bucky before he reaches the guard.  He also angles his body between Bucky and most of the guns. 

“Bucky,” he whispers, clutching Bucky’s shoulders and trying to project how earnest he is with his voice.  “It’s okay.  It’s okay, I swear to you.  Let them process you and put you in your cell, and then we can begin making sure you’re not dangerous and you’re on our side.  It won’t be bad; this is the worst part.  Cross my heart,” he pleads.  ‘Please just don’t kill anyone before we can get you there,’ he adds silently, hoping that Bucky can read his face just as well as always. 

Under Steve’s touch, Bucky calms down.  The wild look in his eyes passes, and he looks like dirtied, worn-out Bucky yet again.  Steve pulls him close and whispers in his ear, letting his lips drag against the shell and make promises that he can’t say yet. “Ease up, for me please, Bucky.  Don’t hurt anyone, don’t act out.  They’re not going to hurt you, and they’re not going to hurt me.  Just calm down.” 

Meanwhile, the look on Bucky’s face as he’d lunged for the agent loops through Steve’s mind like a movie. 

He’d looked feral.  He’d looked…so totally broken by whatever’s been done to him.  He’d looked more like a beast than a man for a second there.

Steve knows it isn’t true, but he also knows that he might be the only one who sees that.  Bucky _has_ to play SHIELD’s game for this to work, and he’d thought that Bucky was prepared to play it. 

Maybe not, though. 

He pulls back, praying not to see that dangerous glint in Bucky’s eyes.  

“Just get me into medical like you promised,” Bucky mumbles.  Something about his voice snags against Steve’s mind, and a pulse of fear shoots through him.  He lives inside that terrifying second where he isn’t sure who’s in front of him, why he sounds like that, why he doesn’t sound like Bucky did in his bedroom last month. 

Then the explanations pour in; Bucky’s been alive the entire time Steve slept under the ice, and of course he’s picked up new ticks and habits.  Bucky’s doubtlessly traumatized by what he’s been through working for Hydra, and that can impact a person’s mind.  Bucky’s scared, and in pain, right now.  Steve’s being selfish to think for a second that the man in front of him, the man who’s looking into Steve’s eyes with trust even when surrounded by a hair-trigger arsenal of security, will necessarily share anything with _his_ Bucky.

He’s psyched himself up for this, and he’s ready.  He’s ready to accept everything this Bucky throws at him, and the fact that Bucky sounds a little different than he does in Steve’s fever dreams is only the beginning. 

“Come on,” he commands gently, keeping a hand on Bucky’s back and walking him forward into the prison facility, ignoring the angry and frantic looks from the agents around him. 

It’s safest for Bucky this way.  It’s also safest for them. 

Steve’s used to being a shield. 

 

Intake is rough.  They strap Bucky down to a table and he practically whimpers as agents cuff his hands individually and lock them into the table a few inches from his sides.  They lock his feet down too, and Steve pulls a chair into the cell to sit at Bucky’s head. 

“You’re okay,” he tries to soothe.  He rubs at Bucky’s brow so Bucky can feel his presence.  “I promise you’re okay, and I’m here.” 

Medical agents flit around Bucky’s body, cutting into his clothing to look at his skin underneath and taking vials of blood from different junctures in his body. 

They cut and peel back the leathers covering Bucky’s chest, and Steve’s heart sinks when he sees the mottled bruising and red spotting spread across Bucky’s entire left side. 

“What’s that?” he asks no one in particular.  Everyone is buzzing around Bucky with purpose and efficiency, and no one answers him.  Steve reaches out and grabs a medical agent by the elbow, forcing her to turn and look at him. 

“Why is he like that?” he demands more forcefully. 

“Bleeding under the skin and infection,” she rattles off.  Steve feels Bucky shudder under his fingertips, and he resumes stroking Bucky’s too-warm forehead. 

“We’re going to put an IV with fluids and antibiotics into him.  Is he allergic to any medications?” the agent asks Steve.  It calls to mind a dozen doctor’s visits where Steve would shudder in the bed while the doctor asked Bucky question after question about Steve’s sleeping, eating, and bathroom irregularities as of late.  Bucky would answer everything with a surety born from knowing Steve’s body better than Steve did.

But Steve can’t return the favor.  He has no idea what Bucky’s allergic to in the 21st century.  He redirects the question to Bucky who glares at the woman and looks confused by the question. 

Right.  So Bucky hasn’t received a lot of medical care.  That makes sense. 

“Just give it to him,” Steve commands, and minutes later, they’re piercing Bucky’s flesh arm and there’s an IV stand by the table.  They hook Bucky up to more machines, and Bucky glares distrustfully at all of the noise and equipment. 

Maria Hill comes in when Steve’s moved his fingers back to stroke through Bucky’s grimy, tangled hair, and she looks at the charts and machines before coming to stand next to Steve.

“We’re going to postpone the interrogation,” she tells him.  “Also, you’re not allowed to be in here.”

“Maria, don’t,” he says with as much authority as he can muster while working out the knots in Bucky’s hair with his fingers. 

“Wasn’t going to,” she replies softly, and between that and the postponed interrogation of a known terrorist, Steve knows that Bucky’s dying.    

“You’re okay,” he whispers for what must be the twentieth time.  “You’re okay, Buck.”  He pushes his mouth against Bucky’s ear again and leaves it there this time. 

The Bucky that Steve knows would shoulder him off with a sarcastic remark, but this Bucky doesn’t do anything. 

“Danke,” he mumbles, and Steve’s heart breaks for his beautiful, strong boy and the many years he spent as a Hydra captive. 

Bucky loses consciousness a few hours later, and they transport him to an operating room, finally barring Steve from entering. 

He sinks into yet another hard plastic chair emblazoned with the SHIELD logo, and he takes out his phone to call Sam.

 

His heart has been beating out a steady, consuming pulse of ‘Save-Bucky-save-Bucky-save-Bucky’ for nearly a year by the time Bucky surrenders.  He’d wanted to go after the man who’d tried to kill him multiple times in Washington before inexplicably pulling him out of the river and saving his life, but injuries and then a dearth of information had slowed him down.

Despite Natasha’s info dump, there’s virtually nothing on the Winter Soldier.  Hydra’s files don’t make any sense as far as Bucky is concerned; they detail recent missions, complications, and results, but anything about what they did to Bucky to make him the Winter Soldier is hidden under numbers and codes.

“Those look like physical file numbers,” Natasha tells him when his eyes are glazing over from staring at his computer for too many hours.  “Look – everything starts off with a letter code, followed by a series of numbers.  Everything to do with his abilities is coded 117.  Everything to do with his…maintenance is coded 085.  These are paper files; why else would you organize them this way?” 

Steve skips over her comment about ‘maintenance’ like Bucky is a dog, and he focuses on her idea. 

“But Hydra digitized everything.  We found the computer bank from the 40s – why would they keep paper files instead?” 

“Maybe Hydra isn’t the only organization we’re dealing with as far as he’s concerned,” she tells him with an arched eyebrow. 

He reads something in her face that she’s not going to give away unless he’s ready to hear it, and even though he probably isn’t, he prods. 

“What do you know?” he asks, rubbing at his temple. 

“I don’t know anything,” she corrects.  “But his slugs are soviet-made, and he’s got a red star on his arm. 

“Russian,” Steve says after he processes her words.  “Red Room?”

“The Red Room was just a part of Department X.  I doubt there’s anyone living who knows all of their secrets, and I certainly don’t.  I still don’t remember most of my time there.”

“Did they keep a paper trail?”

“It definitely sounds more up their alley than Hydra’s.  Russians are paranoid, and they’re very protective of their state secrets.”

“So if this information about Bucky,” Steve points to the numbers on his screen, “is in a records room in Russia somewhere, how do we go about finding it?” 

“Two things.  First, if Hydra is cross-referencing the files, then Hydra probably has access to them here in the states.  Second,” she hesitates.  Steve gives her a look that says he needs to hear her theories, even if he won’t like them.  “Remember what Maria said in the briefing about Hydra burning down some of their own warehouses?” 

When it clicks, Steve finds himself grabbing the laptop and hurling it away from him before he tells his body to move. 

“Goddammit,” he curses.  The laptop hits the wall and explodes into a pile of wires and keys and shards of plastic. 

“Easy,” Natasha admonishes.  But he’s twitching with rage, and he needs to hit something else before it builds up and the destruction turns inward.  He’s out of his seat and heading for the punching bag set up in the corner of his living room before he acknowledges her. 

“Sorry,” he breathes after he gets a couple hits in and transfers some of his anger from the ball in his chest to the bag. 

“You know, destroying one computer is a fluke, but two is a pattern,” she calls from the kitchen table where they’d been searching through Hydra’s files. 

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he admits after a few more jabs and punches.  He hears her get up and come over to him. 

Most people would stand back when Steve’s worked up and in a damaging mood, but Natasha catches his arms and pins them behind his back.  Her red hair tickles his neck as she leans forward to kiss his cheek, and she keeps his arms in her hold until the tension drains out of him. 

“Tony will just be thrilled that he gets to give you a new one.  I have to go; Clint and I are leaving the country tonight.” 

“Coming back soon?” he asks, probably sounding as pathetic as he feels about keeping his small circle of friends close. 

“Of course.  And I’ll put some feelers out and see if we can find any files on the Winter Soldier that Hydra didn’t burn.  There has to be _something_ if they kept a paper trail for over seventy years.” 

 

She turns up a month later carrying a single file folder and another goodbye.  Sam insists they go back to Steve’s apartment before looking at it, but even with Natasha’s helpful handwritten translations and comments, the file doesn’t contain much:

-Some notes on the Winter Soldier’s diet and vitamin regime (Natasha had written, ‘sounds like you, Steve.  Does he have the serum?’)

-Some pictures of Bucky over the years, including one of him inside a chamber with ice crystals on the glass (Natasha had written, ‘This looks doctored.  Look at the corners.  Why generate a fake image of him in a freezer?  Show this to Tony.’)

-And some notes about an escape in 1945.  Apparently, Bucky had knocked a guard out, stolen his suit, and nearly gotten out of Russia on a train.  The most bizarre thing about the information is the note on the last page of the report.  _“After interviews, it is determined that S1 is not responsible and S2 is at fault.  The level of communication between S1 and S2 appears nonexistent before this point.”_ (Natasha had written, ‘???’)

Steve doesn’t know what to make of it either. 

 

And then, before they can find any other information, even just the scraps of a trail that will someday lead to Bucky…he reveals himself. 

Steve is watching a show that Pepper recommended called “Orange is the New Black” when two gunshots ring out behind him.  He jumps over the couch and runs to the balcony door, ready to duck, but the only shadows he sees are on the ground. 

He throws the balcony door open hard enough for it to bounce back and hit him as he steps forward into the dusk, and his attention is immediately caught by two, black-garbed bodies starting to bleed out on his patio rug. 

The bullets clearly came from the roofline, and based off the angle that the intruders fell, Steve thinks he can identify the exact roof where the shooter is hiding.  He has no idea if the person on the roof is a friend or a foe, but he’s going to find out in the most direct way possible.

He has to step back into a pool of blood to give himself enough space to gain momentum, but he runs and jumps and launches himself at the shooter just seconds after the mystery person takes off, rifle shouldered and arms pumping. 

Steve runs after him, and it’s light enough to see the glint of the metal arm and the long, brown hair streaming behind the shooter.

Bucky.

He starts screaming Bucky’s name, and he focuses all of his energies into the pursuit, but Bucky is, if possible, more determined to get away than Steve is to catch him.  Bucky’s also more agile, more familiar with the rooftops, and more willing to play dirty.  Steve almost falls off a five-story ledge at one point, but he catches himself and makes up the lost seconds.

He thinks he has Bucky cornered in an office building, but he doesn’t expect Bucky to jump out of a cubicle and attack him, knocking his feet out from under him and kicking him in the head before he can stand up. 

It makes him dizzy, and Bucky uses the opportunity to escape.  In the end, he fixes the mess in the office that their scuffle had caused and returns to his apartment, using streets and sidewalks this time.  He doesn’t tell Sam about the attack because he knows that Sam would interpret it as a sign of Bucky’s dangerousness instead of what it really was.

A scared animal, trapped in the corner and baring its teeth. 

So he makes him a sandwich the next day to show that there are no hard feelings. 

And then Bucky returns the favor by being less cautious and less timid as he perches on the opposite rooftop and plays bodyguard.  He lets Steve see him from time to time, just his head or his rifle, and Steve knows where he _is_ , knows that he’s alive and close by and defending Steve just like usual.

It’s a rush.  If Bucky is defending Steve, than he knows who Steve is.  And he knows who Bucky is.  And he knows something about the dependency between them. 

He doesn’t even push Bucky, apart from sending Sam out and drawing a few pictures on the windows in chalk.  Sam huffs at him when he sees Steve carefully transcribing the words to Glenn Miller’s “It’s always you” _backwards_ on the windows, but really.  He doesn’t push Bucky, compared to what he wants to do. 

 

Bucky finally comes inside one night when Steve is willing himself to stop thinking and just go to sleep, and he’s never been more thankful for his stress insomnia. 

It isn’t romantic or sexy or even sweet.  Bucky smells ranker than soldiers in the summertime.  Steve has to force himself to breathe normally for several minutes before he finally gets used to the smell and doesn’t want to automatically turn away.  He’s violent and demanding, and he won’t let Steve get a good look at him.  He feels oily and hairy when Steve tucks him under his chin, and Steve starts to itch almost as soon as he gets Bucky in his arms. 

It’s disgusting.  But Steve is in love with this Bucky as much as he had been with a much younger, much more handsome and clean version of him.   There’s no part of Bucky that he doesn’t want to hold tight against him until their skin gives way and Bucky can curl up inside his chest cavity, internal organs and the outside world be damned. 

That’s the closeness he wants.  It’s been too long.

Bucky reacts like a scared animal again, arguing for his lost-ness and pretending that he doesn’t remember Steve, and it hurts for all of a second before Steve sees what he’s doing.  He can practically feel the fear and the panic rolling off of Bucky in waves, but there’s still something in Bucky’s eye that Steve identifies with and understands.  He’s as breathless to be standing in the same room with Steve as Steve feels about the situation, and he knows that Bucky is lying probably better than Bucky does. 

 

“He’s going to turn himself in,” Sam tells him after Steve begs him to go out and talk to Bucky one more time.  His heart leaps and he drops his spoon into the bowl of chicken-noodle he’s eating, but then Sam chills him.

“He’s in bad shape, man.  He looks all sweaty even though it’s cold out, and he was mumbling stuff that didn’t make sense.” 

“He said he’s going to come in with SHIELD?” Steve asks, focusing on the most important information.  Even if Bucky is hurt and ill, SHIELD is his best bet, even splintered. 

“He said he needs to…think about it.  I’m going out again in an hour.  Think we should call it in now or wait?” 

“Wait,” Steve tells him.  “It’s gotta be his decision.” 

 

Steve wakes up in the uncomfortable chair unsure if he’s slept a few minutes or a few hours.  Sam is sitting next to him, playing 2048 on his phone and grunting softly every time he loses.

“Have you heard anything?” Steve asks, slipping back into the conversation they were having before he apparently nodded off. 

Sam is quiet, and at first, Steve thinks he’s absorbed in the game.  Then he sits up straight and stares Sam down. 

“He was screaming about twenty minutes ago,” Sam admits, and Steve is out of the chair and barreling through the locked doors to the operating room. 

Somehow he doesn’t throw up.  The bulk of Bucky’s metal arm is lying on a cart a few feet away from his body, but the base of the arm is still hanging out of his shoulder, cut jaggedly at what would be the bicep. 

His body has been wiped down and cleaned up enough for them to make incisions through his ashen skin, but they’ve missed some obvious spots.  Like his hair.  And the bottoms of his feet.  And under the fingernails of his flesh hand. 

There’s splotches of blood on the blue, gauzy material of the operating table, and they’ve cut into Bucky’s side and shoulder in multiple places.  He can see a long, steel bolt through a cut in the skin at Bucky’s ribcage, and another doctor is pulling out a long, bloody wire from his neck with tweezers like rolling a piece of spaghetti onto the tines of a fork. 

He wonders how deep the arm goes.  He wonders how it’s bolted to Bucky’s body, and what nerve endings it’s plugged into. 

Worst of all, Bucky is semi-lucid.  His flesh hand is bolted to the table, but he’s squirming against the scalpels, and his eyelids are shaking like earthquakes. 

The doctors are are so focused on their wayward, intricate patient that they don’t even notice Steve’s interruption until he shouts, “Why isn’t he sedated??” as he rounds the table to try to get back to Bucky’s head. 

“Steve?” Bucky asks weakly as a chorus of surgeons tries to verbally evict Steve from the OR. 

“His body is burning through the sedative,” one of the surgeons tells him.  Another snaps that Steve needs a mask and a cap if he’s going to stay in the room.

Steve accepts the light blue surgical wear from a nurse, pulling on the cap and mask before he attempts to deal with the shoe coverings. 

“He might have some version of the super soldier serum,” he tells them, thinking back to Natasha’s note about the Winter Soldier’s diet.  Unfortunately, all he has is speculation, because they haven’t gleaned any other information about Bucky.  All they have is Bucky himself. 

“Should we ask him?” Steve wonders aloud.  He plans on asking Bucky every question he has when Bucky is physically and emotionally ready to handle it, but they might have to expedite some of the questioning if it’s going to impact the removal of the toxic arm. 

“No!  Talking to him will make him regain consciousness faster.  We need an anesthesiologist!” the surgeon snaps.

“Steve,” Bucky says, fluttering his eyes open and looking at Steve upside down.  His eyes struggle to focus, but they darken as soon as he narrows in on Steve. 

He mutter something that sounds like lethargic gibberish until Steve’s brain starts to piece it together and compare it to sounds he’s heard before, and that’s when he realizes that Bucky is speaking Russian. 

His heart swoops a little.  On the surface, this doesn’t mean anything but a confirmation of another one of Natasha’s theories, but there’s something sinister about a barely-cognizant Bucky who unthinkingly slips into the language of his captors. 

This is more than the soft “danke” earlier.  Bucky’s stringing together entire phrases and sentences, and he looks at Steve like he expects an answer. 

“Speak English, Buck,” he requests softly. 

“Why’re you wearing a mask?”  He seems upset, and Steve yanks the germ mask off his face automatically.  One of the surgeons tries to say something to him, but his world is narrowed down to Bucky’s sweaty, pained face. 

“They’re going to get this thing out of you, Bucky.  Do you know anything that will help them?”  Bucky grunts noncommittally.  “Like, do you know if, um, the people who did this to you gave you anything like my serum?” 

“He said Zola did,” Bucky responds.  He closes his eyes again.  “Getting it out doesn’t actually hurt any more than having it in.”    

“Who said Zola gave you the serum?” Steve asks.  He doesn’t know what to do with Bucky’s comment dismissing the pain of his surgery. 

“Bucky,” Bucky tells him.  Then they give him another shot and he sighs as he fades back into unconsciousness. 

Steve watches, mulling over Bucky’s words, as they flip Bucky over and cut into his back.  He hears the words “spinal cord” and “fused” and “nerve damage,” and he lifts his eyes to notice for the first time a series of X-rays displayed on the light board.

He looks between Bucky’s body and the X-rays, and he sees that they’re going for the five round circles on his spine that must be bolts. 

“Cut as close to the bone as you can,” one surgeon guides another. 

“Doctor, my recommendation is still to try unscrewing the bolts before taking that risk,” another insists. 

“Oh my god, he’s waking up again,” a third says frantically, and Steve finds himself stepping backwards until he’s standing in the corner of the OR, the panic and frustration in their voices bombarding him. 

He notices his hands are shaking as he shucks a glove off and goes to his pocket for his phone.  Tony picks up on the third ring. 

“Steve-o,” he says, sounding busy but enthusiastic.   

“I need your help,” Steve says in carefully-controlled monotone. 

 

Less than twenty-four hours later, Tony’s robots are finding the last traces of metal in Bucky’s body, and Tony is overseeing the bitter surgeons as they cut, remove, and stitch. 

There’s a new network of scars crisscrossing Bucky’s back and left side, but as Tony had blithely pointed out, “A few dozen more won’t really make a difference, will they?” 

Tony is also responsible for bringing some of the sedative he’d created specifically for Steve after the Battle of Washington, and it’s managed to keep Bucky out for several hours at a time. 

Basically, Steve owes Tony.  His personal timeline is only possible through the continued loyalty of the family Stark, and now he owes them yet another debt of gratitude. 

It strikes Steve as odd how egotistical Tony can be about some things, while he’s almost humble about others.  He waves Steve’s thanks away when he walks out of a six-hour surgery after flying in from California after probably being up for three days.

At the very least, Steve’s making him a pie. 

 

“So tell me about him,” Tony asks later while he, Steve, and Sam are sitting around Bucky’s unconscious body in a recovery cell.  Despite the fact that they’re in a high-security wing, there’s still a television in the corner playing Jeopardy, just like every 21st century recovery room Steve’s ever been in.

Tony is the only one following the Jeopardy game, and it’s the height of unfairness listening to a genius participate in a trivia. 

“I thought you grew up hearing all about the Howling Commandos,” Steve says with a frown.  He’s treading lightly, because he knows how much of a sore subject Howard is for Tony, but the request confuses him a little. 

“Everyone grew up hearing about the Howling Commandos,” Sam chimes in. 

“This is true.  I can’t say we all dressed up as Captain America for Halloween, though,” Tony smirks. 

“I was eight,” Sam protests. 

“Don’t hashtag-throwback-Thursday if you don’t want people to know,” Tony teases him.  Steve laughs, but he can’t keep his eyes off of Bucky for more than a minute. 

He remembers his mother sneaking into his room at night and bending down over his face so she could hear his breathing, and he kind of wants to do the same thing to Bucky.  Just to be sure. 

“I mean, we all know The Story,” Tony is saying when Steve tears his eyes away from his best friend again in an effort to be social and gracious. 

“The 107th was captured, including Sergeant Barnes.  You did your parkour thing and took down a Hydra camp single-handedly.  The best of the best joined together in a kickass, revolutionarily integrated unit and went traipsing all over Europe.  And then, uh,” Tony rubs his bottom lip.  “Well, we can skip the part where Barnes bites the dust, and you too I guess, because you’re both here now.  Healthy and hale.  Or getting there.  All thanks to modern technology.” 

He gives a little bow, apparently finding himself synonymous with ‘modern technology,’ and Steve rolls his eyes with a smile.

Somehow, his eyes don’t make it all the way around, and they get stuck on Bucky again. 

“But what’s the VH1 Behind the Music, Cap?” Tony asks.  Steve tears his gaze away and sees that both Tony and Sam are looking at him curiously. 

There’s differing levels of knowledge going on here.  Sam knows more than Tony does, because he’s been with Steve nearly every day since Washington.  But Tony might know things because of Howard. 

And Steve is hesitant to spill any secrets concerning Bucky while the man sleeps three feet away.  They’ve never really talked about this to anyone, and it feels wrong to expose Bucky without his permission. 

And on top of that, they’re going to need to do some serious renegotiating of their relationship when Bucky wakes up.  He’d made it pretty clear in Steve’s apartment that night that he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything like what they used to have, but is that still true now that he’s surrendered and Steve is back at his side, at least in a protective role?

He doesn’t know, and he thinks that he should shrug and tell his friends about what a ladies’ man Bucky was, and how they were more like brothers than friends. 

On the other hand, Bucky is alive because Sam convinced him to come in, and Tony got the arm out and stanched the blood poisoning. 

“Can I get back to you on that?” he finally says. 

“I already told you about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell being repealed, and the Defense of Marriage Act, and all that, right?” Tony asks. 

“I’m aware, yes,” Steve tells him.  He keeps his expression blank.  Then he smiles. 

“Knew it.  What is ‘nonagenarian heart eyes’ for a thousand, Alex?” Tony crows triumphantly. 

“If my third grade teacher, Ms. Morrison, could hear about this.  Mmm-mmm,” Sam hums. 

Bucky’s hand twitches, and Steve sees the movement out of the corner of his eye.  He’s moving towards Bucky and picking up his hand even as he protests. 

“It wasn’t like that.  You couldn’t admit it, so you had to make a play at being normal.  You had to basically live two lives, and that…that wasn’t really possible in the war.”  Bucky doesn’t stir again, so Steve squeezes his hand and then releases it. 

He turns back to his friends, and they’re waiting for him to say more. 

“Neither of us knows how to _not_ live like that.  And that’s not even taking into account all the things that Hydra did to him.  Or the fact that it’s been decades.” 

Neither Sam nor Tony is smiling now. 

“Really, I don’t know what will happen when he wakes up,” Steve says.  “So, uh.  That’s on the backburner.  And not something that I want to pressure him about.  Make sense?” 

They nod solemnly, but as expected, Tony is the first to recover. 

“Well, if we’re not going to going to be regaled with the salacious E! True Hollywood story-”

“These references are like ten years old.  I don’t know why he keeps doing them,” Sam clarifies. 

“Then I think I’m going to take my leave of you gentlemen and get some sleep.  I’m a SHIELD employee, correct?  I can find someplace here to bunk?”  He claps Steve on the shoulder and salutes Sam before approaching the electric door. 

“Tony Stark, son of the guy who founded you and savior of your medieval operating theater?” he says into the camera, hands raised.  A moment later, the door slides open, and Tony exits with a flourish. 

“He’s my favorite Avenger,” Sam says with a smirk when the doors close again. 

“I thought I was your favorite Avenger,” Steve replies, mock-offended. 

“Stark has style.  You’re kind of a dork.” 

“Show me the picture of you dressed up as me,” Steve demands innocently. 

“Get on facebook,” Sam counters. 

Stark’s drugs keep Bucky asleep through their bantering and the eventual cell phone scuffle for which Maria Hill pages them to knock it the hell off. 

 

Steve runs his fingers over the bandages on Bucky’s right shoulder, feeling the warmth of serum-fueled healing even through the gauze. 

The surgeons said that he might eventually be able to have a new prosthetic, but the bones and the muscles around the socket have to heal first.  No one is really sure what Bucky’s recovery time looks like because they’re still working off the short theory that he’s been genetically modified like Steve, but they don’t have any data besides his rapid break-down of the anesthesia. 

For now, he’s going to have to adjust to only having the one arm.  Steve doesn’t know how long ago Hydra bolted that thing into him, but it’s not hard to imagine that it will be a difficult adjustment. 

He fought Bucky in Washington, and he remembers how the arm had functioned like part of Bucky’s body and like a weapon simultaneously.  It was so fluid the way Bucky used the enhanced appendage.

But it had to come out.  Steve hadn’t even realized how broken the arm was, and how infected Bucky’s body had become as a result of it, until they’d cut his shirt off just days ago and he’d seen the bruising and the angry red spots of sickness covering his body and making him deceptively warm and tender. 

They’re running antibiotics and nutrients into his system now, and his body is making quite the showing of healing.  Steve peeks under the collar of Bucky’s hospital gown to look at his chest, and the splotches are already mostly faded to mint greens and rose pinks.  His scars from the surgery stand out against the pastel colors of his side, but those are healing too. 

He remembers what Bucky told him in surgery: Bucky said Zola gave him the serum.  Obviously, he was delirious at the time, if he was referring to himself in third person.  But is the information still accurate?  Is this because of Zola? 

Have the past seventy years of hell for Bucky been caused by something Steve didn’t take care of before he was frozen? 

“Sorry,” he mutters, pressing a chaste kiss to Bucky’s cheek.  Sam quirks a silent eyebrow at him, but Steve refuses to justify what’s so obviously an innocent gesture of affection.  It’s brotherly, nothing more. 

It’s unlikely, but possible, that Steve’s voice is what pulls Bucky out of his drug-induced unconsciousness and back to the surface.  He’s been twitching his muscles and making little movements for the past few hours, but minutes after Steve apologizes for his unknown crimes, Bucky’s eyes flutter open. 

“Hey,” Steve says softly.  He leans over him, keeping his fingers gingerly resting over Bucky’s bandaged shoulder.  Some instinct propels him to be very clear about his acceptance of Bucky’s new disability, because Bucky had always done the same for Steve’s.

Of course, Steve had always doubted that Bucky _really_ didn’t mind his asthmas or his heart troubles or his traitorous immune system.  He worries Bucky might the same hang-ups, and he wants to nip that in the bud.  Then again, Bucky’d always been the confident one. 

“Wake up when you’re ready.  No rush,” he continues pitching his voice for Bucky’s ears.  Bucky blinks a few times, and Steve gets a good look at his eyes for the first time since 1944.  His stomach clenches as he realizes that he forgot how blue Bucky’s irises are.  With no color photographs, his memory has watered their vibrancy down and reduced them to the shade of a random colored pencil in his set.  He forgot that they don’t make colored pencils in Barnes. 

“Steve,” Bucky sighs.  It’s not a question, and Steve knows that Bucky is choosing him as a focal point while he sorts out all the stimuli around them. 

“You almost died on me again, jerk,” Steve tells him with a smile.  His own eyes are a little moist, but he angles his body away from Sam. 

The look that Bucky gives him is confused, like he can’t fathom why Steve’s eyes are misting at the sentiment, and Steve blinks rapidly and self-consciously. 

Embarrassed, he busies himself with pressing the button that will summon Bucky’s doctors now that he’s awake. 

“I think they want to talk to you real quick, and then maybe we can see about getting you some actual food?  Are you up for that?” Steve asks. 

Bucky looks at him and shrugs.  Then he moves his eyes past Steve and starts looking around the room like he’s casing it for weak points. 

Steve is saved from having to make more hospital chatter, which is harder than he’d imagined, when the electric doors open and two doctors enter. 

“Mr. Barnes, we’re just going to see how some of these have healed in the past few hours,” the female doctor says with a disarming smile.  Her male colleague steps up to one of the machines around Bucky and starts pressing buttons. 

Bucky allows his hospital gown to be untied and pulled down his chest, and the doctor raises her eyebrows at the rapid healing.  Bucky glares at her while she gingerly prods his ribs, and he doesn’t respond when she asks about his pain level. 

Steve smiles apologetically.  He reads Bucky’s discomfort, and just wants the woman to get her hands off Bucky and walk away before he snaps. 

“Let’s look at this shoulder,” she says next, and as her fingers light on the bandages, Bucky jerks away.

“No,” he says firmly. 

“I just want to see if this is healing up as fast,” she ignores the clear warning.  She reaches for the swaddled shoulder again, and Steve opens his mouth to ask her to stop.  Before he can say anything, Bucky swings his legs off the table and gets his thighs around the doctor’s neck. 

“Bucky!” Steve shouts, rushing around the table to pry his legs off the terrified doctor.  Sam gets behind her and tries to help, but he’s not strong enough to unlock Bucky’s legs. 

The doctor looks like she’s struggling to breathe, but Bucky could have broken her neck, so she’s still alright. 

“Bucky, please let go,” Steve murmurs.  He squeezes at Bucky’s muscular, bare leg, noticing absently that he’s completely naked under the hospital gown.  He remembers Bucky having a little more modesty than this. 

“Get away from me,” Bucky spits, and then he releases the woman probably seconds before she passes out.  She sinks back into Sam, and Steve tries to settle Bucky back on the hospital bed.  He eyes the cuff that locks Bucky’s flesh hand against the side of the bed, laughably insecure when they’re dealing with someone with the Winter Soldier’s training. 

And, apparently, his inability to feel pain.  Even with enhanced healing, Steve couldn’t move like that just hours after being sliced open. 

Steve’s vaguely aware that the two doctors are leaving the room, and more doctors and agents are spilling in. 

“Steve,” Sam warns behind him. 

“Can I see your shoulder?” Steve asks, willing Bucky to cooperate and play nice.  Bucky looks at him, assessing, and then nods. 

He peels back the bandages, seeing a nasty network of scars with heavy stitching.  The entire arm socket is bruised and swollen, and it looks misshapen, like it’s missing bones and muscle to round it out and make it functional. 

Bucky doesn’t say anything as Steve moves back, displaying the mangled shoulder to the new doctors. 

“Here, she wanted to look at his shoulder, but she spooked him.”  He hears Bucky snort behind him, and he fights the urge to elbow him. 

“Is is healing okay?” he asks a doctor at random, and apparently the pace of Bucky’s healing is enough to distract at least the medical agents in the room.  A burly, armed agent works his jaw and glares at both Commandos; he reminds Steve of Rumlow before SHIELD splintered and took some of their best agents to the enemy side. 

“It looks like the swelling is going down,” the bravest doctor says.  She inches forward, and Steve splays a hand both comforting and bracing on Bucky’s right side. 

Another doctor presses a button on Bucky’s IV, and it beeps softly as a light purple liquid flushes through the tubing.  Seconds later, Bucky’s eyelids flutter and he relaxes back against the thin pillow with an unhappy groan. 

“You didn’t need to do that.  He was cooperating,” Steve says quietly through his clenched jaw, watching closely as the doctors finally swarm forward and start poking at Bucky and taking his vitals.

“It’s probably for the best, Cap,” Sam says as he steps over to Steve.  He puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, comforting and bracing, and the parallel strikes Steve. 

“He’ll be out for at least an hour.  Why don’t you do home, shower, change your clothes, and get something to eat?” Sam suggests.  “I’ll stay here with him.”

“No, I told him I’d be here the whole time.” 

“He’ll understand if you take a quick break to take care of yourself.  I’m not even asking you to sleep.  Just, go clean up,” he says, pinching Steve’s dirty t-shirt between his fingers.

“I’m good,” Steve tells him.  He sinks back into his chair and watches the other occupants of the room. 

“You’re gonna make me pull out the big guns, aren’t you?” Sam muses.  He takes out his phone and taps at the screen a few times.  A minute later, he’s handing Steve his phone with a picture of a young black boy in a loose-fitting Captain America suit. 

Steve smirks at it and sends it to himself. 

“When they leave,” he says, gesturing at the agents with his chin. 

“You’re like a mama bear.  This guy is pretty damn scary; I think he can take care of himself, even in here.” 

“I know,” Steve tells him.  Sam’s words stick in his mind as he finally gets up and leaves the facility.  As he rides his motorcycle back to his apartment, he rolls the words over in his head until he thinks that he isolates the reason why they bother him. 

Now that Bucky’s arm is out and he’s recovering, does he need Steve for anything more? 

 

* * *

Bucky wakes up strapped to a table and feeling the pain of knitting back together after being sliced and diced.  His head is fuzzy with recent blood loss and drugs. 

It’s a familiar feeling.  The more things change, apparently.

But things _have_ changed.  The awareness of the year (2015) and the place (a SHIELD facility) flicker at the edges of his consciousness, and even though he will probably never wake up in pain without wondering where Karpov or Lukin are, he pushes it aside quickly enough.  

He opens his eyes to take in his surroundings, and the first thing he notices is the man who isn’t Steve.  It’s Sam, even though Steve promised to be there for every step of this surrender. 

“You gonna flip out again?” Sam asks calmly. 

Bucky isn’t sure what he’s talking about, but he’s putting his chips on the asset. 

He has some idea what’s happened over the past few days in this new prison.  Even though all four of them have agreed to “be” Bucky when they’re on the surface, it’s been too stressful to stay on top for very long.  This is Bucky’s first time awake in the facility, and it’s really shitty that Steve isn’t here. 

It makes sense, though.  Yasha was around for part of the operation, and from what Bucky knows, Steve was white as a bed sheet and horrified when they started to cut into him to get the arm and all of its poison out.  He can understand why Steve would choose to walk away from that.  There’s a small part of him that’s glad that he did.

He feels very small and deformed being back down to one arm. 

“Hello?” Sam asks, waving his hand in front of Bucky’s face.  “You awake, man?”  Bucky glares at him until he backs off with a frown. 

He inhales and blows it out.  It’s time to move this along.  He’s ready to cooperate and get off the table so he can be moved into a better cell. 

“I’m ready to be interrogated,” he says into the silence of the cell.  It’s only interrupted by beeping noises from the machines around him and the occasional noise Sam. 

“What?” Sam asks. 

“Steve said you needed to make sure I’m not dangerous and I’m on your side.  I’m ready.” 

“Dude, you were dying like two days ago.  You just had stupid invasive surgery.  Relax,” Sam tells him, drifting back into the space around Bucky’s table.

Fine.  Bucky’s not in control here; he gets the message. 

“You want me to put the TV on?  350 channels, man.  How many did you have growing up?” 

“Is Steve okay?” Bucky asks instead.  Sam studies him, still too close for comfort.

“He’s fine.  He was antsy about leaving you, and, ya know, I’m thinking he was right,” Sam admits, scratching at his chin with his thumbnail. 

Bucky bites down on his bottom lip in anger at Sam’s words. 

“Fuck you,” he says with the unoccupied part of his mouth. 

“Woah woah woah, what did I say?  Shit, I think your lip is bleeding.” 

Bucky is gearing up to spit at Sam, because he doesn’t have any right to comment on why Steve can’t handle Bucky and everything that’s happened to him, even if it’s true.  At that moment, though, Bucky hears a humming noise.  A second later, the electric doors to his cell slide open and Steve walks in with an anxious smile on his face. 

“You’re awake!” he says, grinning in a way that used to make chorus girls’ panties drop as he walked by them in uniform, oblivious.  Steve walks up to Bucky and cups his check, dropping a quick and virtuous kiss on his forehead in greeting.  He frowns as he straightens up. 

“You’re bleeding.”  He looks accusingly at Sam, and Bucky smirks.  “What the hell happened?”

“I do _not_ know,” Sam blusters.  “He woke up and stared at the wall for about ten minutes, and then he said he was ready to be interrogated, and then he asked where you were, and then he got mad at me and did that!” 

“Steve,” Bucky says.  He can hear the relief in his own voice.  Steve is still here with him, even though Bucky has one arm and looks like hell.  He didn’t leave before Bucky finally got a chance to come to the surface and see him. 

“Why do you want to be interrogated?” Steve asks him.  His forehead crinkles with confusion, and Bucky had forgotten how rippled it gets.  He leans into Bucky’s space, and Bucky only wants him closer.

“Don’t get too close,” Sam whispers loudly enough for Bucky to hear. 

“You said I was going to be interrogated, and I’m ready.” 

“Buck, you just had surgery,” Steve echoes Sam’s comment from earlier.  “You’re in pain.” 

Bucky looks at him blankly. 

“Oh, shit,” Sam swears again.  “Steve-”

“I got this,” Steve tells him.  He’s not smiling anymore, and Bucky is possessed by the urge to tell a joke, or pull a face, or do something to bring the smile back. 

“Bucky, I’m guessing that Hydra made you do things even when you were in pain?  Well, you don’t have to.  You don’t have to do anything until you heal,” Steve says. 

“Okay,” Bucky answers.  Then he remembers why he wanted to speed things along in the first place.  “Can I get off this table?” 

“You’re healing, so you need to rest,” Steve tells him.  He gives Bucky a kind look that doesn’t reach his eyes, which are still sad.  So Bucky doesn’t protest, just nods and does what Steve wants. 

He was, and still is, willing to trade in his limited freedom and go back to being a prisoner if it makes Steve happy and keeps him from hurting. 

“I’m going to go get some things to wash your hair, okay?  Be back in a minute.”  Steve gives Bucky’s flesh arm a soft pat, and Bucky nods again. 

He doesn’t regret this decision he and his brothers have made. 


	2. Threat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the many obstacles I had to figure out when writing this story was how to show the readers which personality is on top without making it super obvious for poor, confused Steve. I make sure I drop clues each time there's a switch, so hopefully you'll make the inference pretty seamlessly as you read. 
> 
> In the event that I'm a bad clue-dropper, or you want to check your inferences, I'll be putting a note at the end of the chapter to reveal who's on top during specific scenes. Read it or skip it at will :-)
> 
> Also, my beta Ce is back, without whom there would be no 5am writing encouragement.

They make Bucky wait a week before unlocking him from the table and bringing him to yet another cell (his third in ten days).  He’s been allowed to get up twice a day to use the facilities and work the muscles in his legs, and it’s…different. 

He distantly recalls spending at least a year on a table with only a bedpan for his bladder and electric shocks for his muscles.  Or maybe it was two years.  Or six months. 

It’s been a lot of despondency for a very long time. 

Yasha is on top when the cell transfer happens, and he tells them that it’s mostly uneventful.  They don’t drug him, or collar him, or do much more than cuff him to a SHIELD agent and march him down some hallways with four guns pointed at him and Steve bringing up the rear. 

The new cell is a normal size, and there’s a low bed with a thin mattress running along a wall.  The opposite wall is mirrored, and the agents purposefully say nothing about the fact that it’s obviously transparent from the other side.  There are always unseen eyes on him, and Bucky doesn’t know if it’s one person or an entire division who watches him day and night. 

There’s no radio, which is disappointing.  He’s had one of those for as long as he can remember, and without it, there aren’t a lot of distractions.  Bucky paces, goes through the plots of books and old movies in his mind, and spends a lot of time staring at Steve from beneath a curtain of flowery-smelling hair. 

Steve is allowed to spend four hours with him every day, and their interactions are a struggle. Now that Bucky isn’t wasting away in front of Steve, it’s like they can’t find any common ground.  Worse, they’re holding so much in.  Bucky isn’t talking about what happened to him, and Steve isn’t asking, even though Bucky can see him grinding his jaw and the faint flutter of a pulse jumping in his temple from time to time. 

The asset doesn’t really talk to anyone topside, and Yasha talks too much, so Bucky and Axel share Steve’s visits and the stilted conversation that mixes with the silence of Bucky’s cell. 

“What’d they bring you for breakfast?” Steve asks.  He usually leans against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, like he’s trying to make himself smaller and hide the fact that he has two arms to Bucky’s one. 

“Uh, fruit.  And oatmeal,” Bucky replies.  He’s sprawled on his bed, one leg propped up against the wall and his head hanging over the edge.  He watches Steve sideways, and Steve unapologetically stares back at him. 

“What kind of fruit?”  Steve makes the attempt at prolonging the topic of Bucky’s breakfast.  So Bucky tries to return the favor, but it takes a lot of effort.  All of the small talk he’s made for the past seventy years has been inside his mind, and it’s different, somehow, using his vocal cords and his mouth to do it.  It’s more exhausting. 

“Peaches.  We had peaches a few times, right?” 

“Yeah, we did,” Steve says with an unwarranted grin for the topic.  “We had ‘em a couple times the summer of ‘39 when I was working at O’Malley’s, and I got to bring home the bruised fruit.” 

His voice is sturdy with the surety of what, for him, are recent memories. 

Bucky searches his mind, but he can’t remember an O’Malley’s, or peaches, or anything specific that happened in 1939.  It’s another stumbling block for them; Steve’s recent past is Bucky’s lifetime ago.  Talking to the other personalities about his memories of Steve and his childhood have kept some remembrances crisp and detailed, but there’s a wealth of little facts and stories that he hasn’t thought of in years.  So much has been lost to time, and Bucky wasn’t aware how extensive it was until Steve started prodding at his memory with little tidbits of their past like this. 

“I remember, one time we were sitting on the fire escape and eating peaches, or at least you were,” Steve forges on, “and Eddie Maguire walked by, and you threw your peach pit at him.  Remember that?”

Bucky actually does remember Eddie Maguire.  He remembers that Eddie had beaten Steve up for kicks in front of a dance hall to impress his friends, and he remembers that he’d consequently stolen Eddie’s girlfriend on purpose just to have a socially acceptable reason to hate him. 

“I remember that.” 

“You do?”  Steve narrows his eyes.  “You swore up and down that you dropped it on accident.  Are you admitting now that it was intentional?” 

Bucky closes his eyes.  Why does it fucking matter whether or not he threw a peach pit at a freckled hoodlum neighbor almost eighty years ago? 

“Sure.” 

Then they lapse back into silence. 

A few minutes later, Steve starts to talk about his own morning.  He’d gone for a run, picked up some pancetta from a local butcher, and made a frittata.  Then Sam had come over to eat the frittata, and they’d watched the news and lifted weights. 

Bucky listens attentively, though he doesn’t contribute.  Sam annoys or angers him at times, but it’s clear that he’s a very qualified best friend to Steve.  He knows that there’s no point in comparing Steve’s friendship with Sam to the dynamic that Steve used to have with Bucky, but he can’t help it sometimes. 

 

The interrogations are easier.  Answering questions isn’t nearly as difficult as participating in a two-sided conversation, and the biggest challenge is deciding what to reveal. For continuity, Bucky stays on top through all of the interviews. 

A SHIELD agent who introduces herself as Director Maria Hill and brings two armed guards with her enters his cell regularly. She also brings a chair, a hand-held computer, and a bottle of water for herself.  Bucky’s under no illusions about the window-wall; he assumes that at least a dozen people are watching him stumble through Hill’s questions, and he’s fairly certain that Steve is among them.  Also, he’s sure that his answers are being recorded so they can be replayed and dissected long after Hill leaves and Axel floats to the top. 

Hill wants information about Hydra and, when she prods further, Department X.  She wants to know about the people who jailed him and the things they did to him.  And she wants to know about the Winter Soldier.

Bucky doesn’t care how much he gives away about his captors or his whereabouts for the past several decades.  The information that he’s not willing to give away concerns some of the more heinous things that were done to him, and the resulting four identities. 

His main reason for wanting to keep these things to himself is because he can feel Steve’s presence on the other side of the glass, but even thinking about saying some of those things aloud feels physically repugnant and self-violating.  He’ll take them to his grave, when and if he goes. 

 

“Mr. Barnes.  Or Bucky.  Or James.  What would you like to be called?” Hill asks with false politeness overlying her drive for information. 

Bucky shrugs, enjoying the way her eyes uncomfortably track on his socket-less shoulder.  He’s wearing a loose-fitted uniform, and the rough cotton sleeve flaps limply where an arm should round it out. 

“Okay, then.  I’ll stick with Mr. Barnes.  You were telling us yesterday about the partnership between Hydra and Department X in the 40s.” 

Bucky doesn’t hear a question, so he calmly stares her down while chewing on the inside of his cheek until she asks one.  She tries to hold his gaze, but she breaks eye contact first. 

“So, Vasily Karpov, who was Russian and Department X, was in charge of a Hydra division?”

“Yes.”

“And where was this division located?”

“Outside Moscow.” 

“For how long did this partnership exist?”

“I don’t know,” he says truthfully.  “From 1944 at the latest, to 1948 at the earliest.  I think.”

“How did you know where the facility was?”

“Lukin told me.  Also, I,” he stresses the singular pronoun, “escaped once and almost made it to the border of Poland.” 

“How do you know how long you were with them?” 

“My hair.  It was the first time it grew that long, and I used it to keep track of time.”  Hill eyes his snarled, brown mop of hair distastefully, and he shrugs again.  “It’s been awhile since I had a haircut now.” 

“We can take care of that,” she says, making a note on her computer. 

“No.  No one’s coming near me with scissors,” he informs her.  He personally doesn’t mind, but depending who’s on top, it might be problematic. 

“Or Captain Rogers could cut it,” he says a moment later with a deliberately cocky smile.   He likes holding this over them – this knowledge that their precious Captain America is visiting him and vouching for him daily. 

It’s his trump card, and he’s playing it shamelessly.  You can’t grievously hurt me, he’s saying, because Steve Rogers won’t like it. 

He’s never really had a trump card besides his brothers, and his end game is to wield it all the way to a radio and better food.  Maybe books.  He’s not sure how many years he’s destined to spend in this new prison, and this time it falls on him to do their bargaining instead of the asset. 

“Okay, you can ask him when you see him this evening,” Hill says.  She doesn’t let him divert the questioning, but steers it back to the topic at hand.

“After that, when’s the next time you were under Hydra’s control?”

“When the Soviet Union fell.  I was sold, because KGB funding to Department X projects fell off.  And I wasn’t being used a lot, anyway.” 

“How did you feel about the Soviet Union falling?” she asks curiously.  Bucky almost tells her that he didn’t give a damn, but on the off chance that Yasha talks to anyone about it, he needs to lay a cover story.

“It was upsetting, but we’d already veered pretty far away from Comrade Lenin’s vision for the workers.  I just wish we’d abolished Pravda and most of the party leadership, and tried again instead of giving up.” 

“I notice that you’re including yourself as a Soviet,” she points out. 

“Полагаю что так. Русским я прожил дольше, чем кем-либо ещё.”

“And what did you just say?”

“I said I suppose so.  I’ve lived far more years as a Russian than I have as anything else.” 

She taps her stylus against her computer screen several times.

“So are you a Russian patriot?”

“I guess.” 

“Are you loyal to the Russian government?”  The tenseness in her hand as she grips the computer gives away the importance of this question. 

“I’m loyal to whoever owns me,” Bucky replies.

“What if no one owns you?”

“When no one owned me earlier this year, I was loyal to Steve.  Now that I’m here, I’ll be loyal to SHIELD.”

“SHIELD doesn’t own you, Mr. Barnes,” she says, ignoring his segue.

“I surrendered,” he points out. 

“That doesn’t imply ownership.”  He gives her an exasperated look, irritated by her game.  And the fact that she doesn’t think he knows the rules to this particular game. 

“Yes it does,” he says with the same look. 

“We’ll revisit that.  For now, let’s talk about some of the hits you carried out for the Soviets.”

“There were a lot.  I don’t remember them all.”  This is the area of the interrogation where he’s shakiest, because he didn’t want to know what the asset was doing for many years.  He still doesn’t really want to know, but he’d asked the asset for enough details to make his confession believable. 

“Any VIPs?” 

“Maybe.  I didn’t really know who my targets were.  I was always surrounded by people who got me in position and took me away after the hit was over.” 

“If I said a name, would you know if you’d killed them or not?”

“Possibly.  I might have heard something and remembered it.” 

“Joseph Stalin?”

“That’s a yes.”  How could he forget the first death he’d ever connected to the asset’s hands?

“Benazir Bhutto?”

“Possible.”  Or maybe it was another alliterative name.

“King Faisal?” 

“That doesn’t sound familiar.”  It doesn’t sound familiar _at all_.  Bucky’s acutely aware of his ignorance of world events, but it’s another reminder that millions of people have lived and done important, history book-worthy things while he’s been trapped in a cell.  And he barely knows about any of them.  He bets Steve’s read up on everything by now. 

“Rafic Hariri?”

“Uh, I think so.”  Was that the TNT? 

“John F. Kennedy?” 

“Pretty sure, yeah.”  It’s all that anyone in the States had been able to talk about when they’d escaped to Brooklyn in the 60s. 

“Liaquat Ali Khan?”

“I don’t think that was me.”  He’s heard the name, but he thinks he remembers that someone else got there before the asset. 

“Howard and Maria Stark?” 

“No,” he lies outright, the first one of the day. 

Hill looks at him like she can tell something’s off about his confessions, but she’s not going to win any mind games with Bucky.  For all of her competency, she’s a baby.  She can’t be any older than forty, which makes her more than fifty years Bucky’s junior. 

And he’s stared down men far more dangerous and fucked up than she without giving in.

“Let’s talk about your assassin training,” she finally drops his gaze and diverts her eyes back to her computer.  Bucky can’t help but smirk.  It probably doesn’t win him any points with the agents behind the glass, but he’s always instinctually taken pleasure in small victories.  Radios, hot showers, and making his captors flinch have been the only things besides memories of Steve to keep him feeling vaguely human these long decades.  If they won’t give him the first two, and it’s only a matter of time before Steve doesn’t want to do this anymore, then he knows his options for amusement are severely limited.

 

* * *

 

“Besides guns, what weapons did they train you to use?” Hill asks Bucky.  Steve studies him through the glass, tapping his fingers against his thigh nervously. 

This isn’t going well, and the stirrings and murmurings of the other agents behind the two-way glass confirm it.  Bucky’s giving away everything while giving away nothing.  He’s not telling them what they need to know about his abilities, his brainwashing, or his plans now that Hydra is splintered.  Making matters worse, he’s sprawled on the bed in the cell and smirking at Hill like he doesn’t have a care in the world.  It’s making the other agents uncomfortable.

“The arm.  Knives.  Grenades and other explosives,” Bucky answers after thinking about it. 

“This guy’s a sociopath.  He doesn’t give a fuck about what he’s talking about.  Or about where he is and what we can do to him,” a junior agent mutters from Steve’s left.  A few other agents swivel their heads to catch Steve’s reaction to the intentionally audible dig, but Steve doesn’t do anything besides flex his fingers into a fist and then let them out again to tap. 

It’s nothing he hasn’t heard whispered or implied before.  There’s a large contingent of SHIELD that wants to send Bucky over to the Raft prison and lock him up permanently with the likes of un-rehabitable super villains, and the Avengers are the main thing preventing that from happening. 

Bucky’s status as a POW and a victim of Hydra make him hard to classify.  He’s clearly done a lot of terrible, violent things, and he’s worked for American enemies for long periods of time.  What’s less clear is how voluntary his acts of terror were. 

If they can prove that Bucky was brainwashed, or intimidated, somehow controlled into his Winter Soldier work, then SHIELD doesn’t have grounds to hold him.  And that’s what Steve wants, and what Natasha and the others have been helping him push for behind the scenes.  Hill promised that, if they can prove it, they’ll help Bucky heal and reintegrate.  The prospect of the Winter Soldier as an Avenger is a tantalizing one for someone so steeped in the intelligence community as Maria Hill, and she’s on their side, even though Bucky doesn’t seem to believe that. 

For his part, Steve hasn’t reconciled the destruction in the Winter Soldier’s wake with his knowledge of Bucky.  Bucky the Brooklynite would never shoot civilians.  Bucky the caretaker would never bomb hospitals.  His skin crawls and his eyes water when he listens to lists of Bucky’s alleged crimes read from a list that spans decades. 

But maybe it makes more sense than he wants to accept.  Maybe Bucky the soldier would kill on command without question.  Steve remembers cold trenches and snap judgments, and knows that the war was a hell of a primer for violent obedience.  Whatever Zola and these other men, Lukin and Karpov, did to Bucky must have built on that and compounded it. 

So he’s still in some degree of disbelief about how it happened.  But he doesn’t question for a second that Bucky _isn’t_ at fault. 

The trouble is that Bucky isn’t talking about mind control or threats or even Stockholm syndrome.  The things he’s saying, and the way he’s acting, aren’t remorseful or grateful.  His behavior isn’t in line with that of a brainwashing victim coming back to the surface.  His lucidity about different parts of his life as the Winter Soldier varies, but nothing in his monotone delivery or his objective fact recall suggests that he hadn’t _wanted_ to do the things Hydra and Department X made him do. 

And there’s the rub.  If Steve didn’t know and love the man in the cell, he might hear him speak and think ‘villain,’ too. 

 

After Bucky describes the Cryofreeze process, completely unemotional as usual, Hill decides that’s enough for today.  Steve pulls her aside as she leaves the cell, and they walk to her office and close the door for privacy. 

“I’m doing everything I can besides saying the word ‘brainwash,’ and he’s not biting.  I can’t get a read on him,” she says as she tosses her tablet down on the desk and starts to pace with her arms crossed.  “I spoke to him for an hour, and he answered every question, and I have no idea what’s going on in his mind.  I don’t know fully what they did to him, and I don’t know how much he bought into it.  This is insane.  He’s like a maze.”

“Can you just ask him, were you brainwashed, or were you of sound mind when you did these things?” Steve asks.

“No, I can’t.  Because that’s the power of suggestion, and I can’t prove he’s telling the truth if I put the idea in his head,” Hill says as she sits down on the corner of her desk.  Steve takes the seat opposite her and rubs at his mouth, waiting for her to speak. 

“Steve,” she says after a minute, “I know that Bucky’s a victim here.  I know you wouldn’t vouch for someone who had it in them to kill for Hydra without batting an eye, and I know that terrible shit’s been done to him.  It’s all over his body, even if we can’t pull it out of his mind yet.” 

Steve raises an eyebrow at the swear, but then he remembers that she’s Fury’s direct subordinate. 

“I’m not for a second suggesting that he did what he did voluntarily, but we need that from him directly before we can start getting him psychiatric help and eventually process him over to you.” 

Steve identifies with the frustration and the regret in her voice. 

“What are we missing?” he asks after a moment of thought.  She shrugs.  “We’re missing something.  Something happened to him that put him on this path, and none of the normal questions are getting us there.” 

“Brain-washing device is still our operating theory.  We know Hydra’s used it before.”

“Yeah, but none of those victims remembered what happened.  It’s like Bucky remembers, but he doesn’t,” Steve says, running back the latest interrogation in his mind. 

“Magic?  We know Hydra had the Tesseract at one point.” 

“The timeline doesn’t match up.  He wasn’t brainwashed yet when Hydra had it, and they’d lost it by the time the brainwashing must have happened.” 

“Trauma from falling off a train, or whatever they did to him in captivity?”  Steve winces at that.  He’d kept it together during yesterday’s interrogation while Bucky had described his recue from the Alps by Hydra agents, even when Bucky had talked indifferently about being dragged to a transport and seeing his hand lying in the snow. 

Then he’d gone home and punched through the glass door of his shower. 

“It makes sense.  He said they tortured him, and Zola did the same thing, but…” he trails off.

“He doesn’t seem mentally broken,” Hill finishes for him. 

“Right.  He’s sound, he’s coherent, he’s capable of feeling at least some emotions.  Otherwise he wouldn’t have staked out my apartment to protect me for months,” Steve exhales.  He’s agitated, because this isn’t something that he can fix by hitting it or capturing the right person.  He feels helpless.

“Can you break someone’s mind in a way that makes them susceptible to control without taking away everything else?” he asks. 

“We’ll know more when we can get Psych and maybe some mind-readers to talk to him.  But we can’t do that while he’s still our top threat,” Hill tells him.  She stands up and walks around the desk to sit down in her chair. 

“Can I talk to him?  Privately, without the cameras and the eavesdroppers?” 

Hill hesitates. 

“I just want to reassure him that we’re trying to help.  You heard the way he’s talking – he thinks we own him.  He probably doesn’t get that he’s getting out of here once he complies.  He thinks we’re like them,” Steve adds when Hill doesn’t look convinced. 

“Am I doing something very wrong, or very right, that my criminal intake is on par with a KGB prison?” she finally replies. 

“Very right,” Steve says with a grin.  “We need the severity, especially after Pierce.  But we also have to be able to evaluate cases individually and compromise.”

“I can get you a camera and audio black-out,” she tells him.  “Nothing recorded.  But I can’t get rid of the babysitters behind the glass.  That’s too much.” 

“Thank you,” he tells her. 

 

Steve enters Bucky’s cell that evening with a sketchbook and several sharpened pencils.  He tells the guards outside Bucky’s door that he wants to draw some things for Bucky, and they look at the pencil tips doubtfully. 

“I survived gunshot wounds.  I think I’d hold up against a pencil,” he tells them with all of the friendliness he can muster.

“Isn’t he the one that shot you?” one of the guards asks.  Steve doesn’t say anything, and they let him in the cell with nervous looks at their colleagues. 

“Hey.  How are you?” Steve asks as he steps inside.  Bucky’s lying face-down on the bed in a way that can’t be comfortable for his nose, but he stirs slightly when Steve enters. 

For this to work, Steve has to sit next to him, so he reaches out and nudges Bucky. 

“Scoot so I can sit down,” he suggests.  Bucky peers up at him from beneath the curtain of his hair, and Steve knows that he looks confused because Steve usually stands when he visits.  He doesn’t want to invade Bucky’s space, but he’s surprised when Bucky sits up and then slides towards him so that their sides are touching as they sit next to each other. 

Bucky’s willingness to be touched, by anyone and by Steve, varies from day to day.  It’s maddening if Steve tries too hard to analyze it, so he doesn’t.  Besides, he doesn’t have a lot of time before someone ‘fixes’ the cameras. 

The unfortunate electrical failure with the recording equipment means that the only view into the cell is from the two-way glass, and they can’t see the sketchbook that Steve’s opening on his lap and tilting toward himself and Bucky. 

‘We need to talk,’ he writes with the pencil.  He waits for Bucky to see it and give him a barely-perceptible nod.  He looks at Steve with interest and trust, so different from the way he’d treated Hill. 

‘Some people here want to lock you up permanently as a threat.’  Bucky doesn’t react to that. 

‘Others don’t,’ he writes next.  ‘Me, Hill, Sam, Tony, and other you haven’t met.’  Bucky raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.  He seems to understand implicitly why they’re having this conversation in writing.  Nothing’s being recorded, but the agents behind the glass can hear just fine. 

‘We can let you go soon.  You can come live with me, and we can help you heal,’ Steve writes.  Bucky looks surprised at the offer, and how had he not known that of course Steve would want Bucky to come live with him? 

‘We have friends, doctors and specialists, who can help undo what they did to you.’  Bucky looks uncomfortable now, and he shakes his head as Steve is about to write again. 

‘Yes, they can.  But you need to tell Hill what happened.  Not how Hydra found you, or where they kept you, or who you think you killed.  What did they DO to make you do those things?’ 

Bucky reaches for the sketchbook and pencil, and Steve passes them over.  He realizes as Bucky grasps the pencil in his right hand that it’s not going to work.  Bucky is left-handed.  But to his surprise, Bucky can write without much difficulty.  It’s messy, but he seems practiced.  It’s not even on the radar of the top thousand questions itching under Steve’s skin, but he wonders. 

‘What do you want me to say?’ he writes.

‘What happened.  What they did.’ Steve responds, leaning over to write without pulling the sketchbook back. 

‘I don’t know what you want,’ Bucky responds.  He meets Steve’s eyes, and his gaze is unsure and slightly wild.  ‘I don’t want to talk about what they did to me.  I don’t want to relive it.’ 

Steve’s heart breaks, and he slips an arm around Bucky and pulls him closer without thinking about it.  Bucky clenches up, but he relaxes before Steve can regret the gesture.  Steve buries his face in Bucky’s hair and thinks distantly about Bucky’s idea of him cutting it from the interrogation. 

‘They hurt you,’ he writes next.  It isn’t a question, but Bucky nods and Steve feels the movement against his chin.  ‘I don’t want to push you, but we need some way to prove that they’re responsible for what the Winter Soldier did, not you.  Can you tell me anything about what they did to you?’ 

Bucky rests the tip of his pencil against the paper.  He changes his grip a few times, like he’s trying to figure out how to start the words, but then he presses the graphite against the page and pushes.  He pushes and the pencil slips to the side, drawing a thick, gray line across the fancy paper, and then he’s scribbling frantically, whipping the pencil back and forth in no discernible pattern and just seemingly trying to black out the whole page. 

The pencil tip snaps, and he keeps scribbling, ripping the paper before he stops.  Steve feels his torso expanding and contracting rapidly as his lungs race for breath, and Steve casually wipes away a tear that’s threatening to drop from his eye. 

‘That’s what they did?’ he writes on an area of the page that Bucky hasn’t destroyed. 

‘Years, I think,’ is how Bucky responds. 

‘The torture,’ Steve writes, then he changes course.  ‘Did you do it to stop the torture, or did you do it because the torture messed with your head?’  Bucky thinks about it and then circles both ideas. 

“Okay,” Steve says audibly.  Then he writes, ‘I can work with that.  Do you think you can say this to Hill the next time she interrogates you?’ 

Bucky scowls, but he nods. 

Steve doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, so he decides to do what he’d initially told the guards and starts to draw.  He flips to an unmarred page and starts to sketch the circles and lines of people, keeping his arm around Bucky since he’s not resisting.  Bucky sinks further into Steve’s side, and despite the things he’s just learned, Steve smiles a little.  He drops a chaste kiss on Bucky’s head and then stops that train of thought, focusing on sketching the two of them back in Brooklyn with their mismatched bodies and their youthful stupidity. 

He draws scenes from their old life together, menial and silly scenes, until Bucky takes the pencil from his hand and pulls the book closer to him. 

‘Don’t ever talk to me about what I’m going to write,’ he scratches into the page.  Steve frowns. 

‘Promise?’  He nods, and Bucky takes a deep breath. 

‘I am more fucked up than you can understand, and I think that you are going to give up on me.  So I am trying to encourage you to give up on me, or at least trying to minimize damage.’

Steve tries to take the pencil back, but Bucky won’t give it up.  He doesn’t understand the prelude to the message.

‘Please do not give up on ~~Buc~~ me.  You are very important to me.  You were on my mind for 80 years.  Just be patient.’

The message makes Steve uneasy.  The slip into third person, the instructions never to mention it again, and the frank self-awareness of the message feel strange.  He looks at Bucky inquisitively, and he just points to the first message.  He taps the pencil tip against the words, as if saying ‘Got it?’

“Okay,” Steve whispers.  He’s still confused, but he certainly isn’t capable of giving up on Bucky, and the message actually warms his stomach with something akin to hope. 

 

The next day, Steve takes his customary place behind the two-way glass as Hill settles into her chair in Bucky’s cell.  He’s still slouching against the wall, but he at least looks more invested in the proceedings today. 

“I want to start by asking you some potentially triggering questions.  Is that okay?”

Bucky shrugs, and Steve wonders if he even knows what that means.  Or why some people would feel guilty for pressing him about uncomfortable topics. 

“You’ve talked a little about your time with the joint Hydra/Department X division, and then your time with Alexander Lukin’s Department X division after that.  What was it like being their prisoner?”

“What was it like?” Bucky echoes.  “It was bad.” 

 _Come on, Bucky_ , Steve thinks. 

“I’ll need you to be more specific,” Hill requests, and Bucky glares at her. 

“It was a smaller cell than this, at first,” he starts.  “Or a table.  And people everywhere, speaking German and ignoring me.  And shitty food.  And electricity,” he says, and there’s something in his eyes that isn’t looking at Hill anymore.

“And boots.  And knives.”  He raises his hand to his face and scrunches his eyes shut, pressing his index finger against the corner of one eye.  His voice changes and his pitch starts to roll up and down rhythmically as he gets stuck in description. 

“And bars.  And sleeping standing up.  And fucking laughing.  And burning.  And no clothes.  And no teeth, boy.  And rotted teeth.  And cold.  And water, lots of water.  And machines.”

Steve raps his knuckles against the glass to stem the tide of exposition.  Hill’s eyes are wide, and she works her jaw as she looks at Bucky. 

“That’s enough,” she says.  Bucky shuts up, but he doesn’t open his eyes or take his finger away from his face. 

Hill waits him out, and Steve’s never been so grateful for her steely nerves.  Eventually, Bucky lets out a wheezy breath and blinks his eyes open. 

Then he smiles pleasantly at Hill, and the whispering behind the glass starts up again. 

“Sociopath,” someone hisses. 

“I’m sorry, what were we talking about?” Bucky very politely asks Hill.  Steve can see how much she’s thrown by the change in demeanor. 

“Uh, we were talking about, about the ways in which you were tortured.  I was going to ask if you ever did anything for Hydra or Department X to make the torture stop.”

“Hang on,” Bucky says, raising his hand.  Hill obliges, and Bucky shuts his eyes again.  He opens them a minute later, and he’s scowling again. 

No one says anything, and then Hill finally speaks up.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?”

Bucky’s mouth contracts into the _wh_ motion, and Steve just knows somehow that he’s about to say, ‘what question.’  Instead, he clears his throat. 

“Yes,” he tells Hill. 

“Did you ever do anything for Hydra or Department X to make the torture stop?” she repeats without missing a beat.

“Yes.  They wanted me to fight for them.  Like Captain America.  So I did,” Bucky tells her.  He’s reigned in whatever flashbacks were riding him moments ago, and he’s back to sounding unconcerned. 

“Did the torture make you do things you wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances?” 

“Yes,” Bucky tells her.  She prompts him to go on. 

“I already told you, I don’t remember a lot of what I did.  Most of what I’ve pieced together is because of guards and scientists talking about it.  I wasn’t in control, as in, making decisions and then carrying them out.  Someone else made decisions, and I couldn’t remember them after the fact.”

‘Bingo,’ Steve mouths silently. 

“I would wake up,” Bucky continues tonelessly. “From these periods that I couldn’t remember, and I’d feel like myself.  But I’d have blood in my hair, and I’d know that something had happened.  And when they wanted me to be the asset again, yeah, they’d hurt me.”

“So if your arm were still attached and functioning, are you capable of the same things now that you were in the Battle of Washington?” 

“No,” Bucky tells her.  He sound as earnest as the altar boy he used to be.

“Bullshit,” an agent remarks behind Steve, and he can’t keep quiet any longer.

“You need to shut up,” he tells the man.

“And why should we believe that?” Hill asks, coming to the climax of the interrogation.  It’s the turning point, and Bucky is so very close.  Steve prays that he knows that. 

“Seeing Captain Rogers snapped me out of…this place I was mentally, where I was just following orders.  The only violent acts I’ve committed since then have been to protect him, and I feel like you guys get behind that.” 

Hill takes a deep breath.  Steve wants to kiss her. 

“Sergeant Bucky Barnes, you are no longer a prisoner of war.  You are on American soil, among your own troops, and safe.  Medical and psychological care will be provided for you, and you’ll be kept in this cell only until we can be sure that it’s safe for you to leave.”  Hill beams at Bucky and stands up. 

“Welcome back, sir,” she adds, before turning on her heel and leaving a very bemused Bucky behind. 

“Why are we trusting this guy?” an agent in Steve’s peripheral vision asks, and Steve turns fully to face him. 

“Don’t be an idiot.  He hasn’t cleared Psych, and we’re going to get him to meet with Strange.  But he’s gonna get there,” Steve promises.  No one says anything to his face, though he’s sure that they’re going to break into complaint as soon as he leaves, so he exits and catches Hill on the way to her office. 

“What now?” he asks, excitedly. 

“Well, now we’ve got his intel, and it correlates with the limited information available about him in the Hydra files.  It’s enough to add an ‘involuntary’ to most of the things on his rap sheet.  At least for now.  This makes his threat level plummet; we’ve got bigger fish to blow this level of security on.”  She taps away at her tablet, but Steve can see the look of victory in her eyes.  If she hadn’t been on their side for this, Steve doesn’t know what he would have done.

“When can I take him home?” Steve asks. 

“Slow down, cowboy,” she orders.  “We’ve got more boxes to check.  We can’t remand him to you until we’re sure he’s not going to freak out and shoot some poor, unsuspecting soul-”

“He’s missing an arm,” Steve points out.

“-which you know I’m aware of, and which should hopefully speed things along.”  She stops walking and puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

“You know I have faith in you.  I’d let him go today, except A. That would make a lot of mutinous SHIELD agents, and we can’t afford that right now, and B. I really do think he needs to talk to Psych.  You heard him.  They did _not_ observe the Geneva Convention.  He needs serious help, before you can play house with him.” 

“Can we do anything about the cell?” Steve asks.  She turns and walks away.

“I bet Stark will give him a StarkTablet, if you ask.  And maybe get him some memory foam for the bed?” she tosses over her shoulder as she leaves. 

 

He shows up later that night at Bucky’s cell with a pizza, some pillows, and yes, a StarkTablet.  The guards who let him in look a combination of envious and disapproving.

“I brought creature comforts,” he says happily as he walks into the cell.  Bucky’s doing one-armed push-ups on the floor by his bed, shirtless, and Steve doesn’t know whether it’s worse to be caught looking at his mangled shoulder, or looking as his muscles. 

Even at the height of the war, when Bucky had shed all of his baby fat (not that there was much, coming from their neighborhood) and was regularly carrying around one hundred pounds worth of gear, he hadn’t been this built.  This is yet another physical change that happened while Steve was comatose, and it’s only one of Bucky’s physical changes that doesn’t hurt to look at.  It’s quite the opposite, really, now that the bruising and red patches are mostly gone.

Bucky sees him hovering a few feet away, and he scowls, but doesn’t stop. 

“My serum didn’t give me a makeover, apparently.  I have to work to stay in fighting shape.” 

“Gotcha,” Steve says as he steps around Bucky and throws the pillows on his bed.  “I come bearing gifts.  You’re stuck in here a little bit longer, but the visiting hours have changed, and I brought you a tablet.  You know what the internet is, right?  Because I know how to use it, but I’m not sure I can really explain how it works.” 

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asks gruffly, finally standing up.  There’s a light sheen of sweat on his chest, and Steve pretends to be examining the shoulder wound that’s recently shed its stitches. 

“This looks good for being a death trap two weeks ago.”  He reaches unconsciously for Bucky’s side to steady himself as he looks closer, but Bucky weaves away.

“Don’t touch it,” he says. 

Steve steels himself to ignore Bucky’s mood and sits the pizza down on Hill’s abandoned chair. 

“I want to show you how to use this.  Then you’ll be able to read book, watch movies, basically do whatever you want to pass the time.”  He holds up the tablet and then sits down on Bucky’s bed to get started.  Bucky doesn’t join join him; he eyes the pizza warily. 

“Eat,” Steve encourages as he powers up the tablet.  Tony had copied the contents of Steve’s tablet over so that Bucky would have a head start on media from the 30s and 40s, as well as some important books and movies since then which had paved the way to modernity.  Steve’s a little unnerved by the fact that Tony can copy the data on his tablet without ever touching it, but he doesn’t mention this to Bucky. 

He starts to show Bucky the different features as Bucky eats a slice of pizza in the messiest way possible, ending up with grease down his chin and in his hair. 

“So this is a good site if you want to know what’s going on in the world.  You can look at just US news, World News, or any specific category like Politics or Technology or Health.  And a lot of the links have videos, so, they’re kind of like newsreels,” he tells Bucky.  He gets the impression that he’s being ignored, though, so he sets the tablet aside. 

“Maybe we can download some Russian books and movies?  I’ll ask Natasha,” he suggests, trying to hook Bucky’s interest in some small way. 

“How do you download books?” Bucky asks, confused.  Steve smiles through the tendrils of annoyance.  It’s hard to tell sometimes when Bucky’s being rude because of what’s happened to him, and when Bucky’s being rude because of the Barnes asshole gene. 

“I just showed you, but I’ll show you again.”

“I don’t want that,” Bucky points to the tablet, looking irritated by its presence in his cell.  He takes another slice of pizza, though, so at least Steve got that right.

“You don’t want the tablet because you don’t understand it.  You’ll change your mind in a few days.  I did,” Steve tells him.  Something scratches at the back of his memory, and he laughs when he realizes how easily he’s slipped back into the know-it-all to Bucky’s cynic.

He expects Bucky to keep protesting, because that’s how that used to go, but Bucky turns away and eats his pizza facing the wall.  Steve feels at a loss, unsure how to respond to Bucky when he’s in this mood.  He isn’t laughing anymore. 

“You mad at me?” he asks, unsure how to reconcile this behavior with Bucky’s softness the previous night. 

“No, I just don’t want that,” Bucky tells him.  Steve opens his mouth to respond, but he can’t think of anything. 

“So what do you want?  I can get you actual books and movies.  I can get you whatever you want, within reason,” he offers.  Bucky turns around again, and there’s sauce at both corners of his mouth. 

“I want more of this.  What is this?”

“That’s pizza.  We had it in our time, but it didn’t become really popular until after the war.  It was all those American GIs stationed in Italy,” Steve informs him.  It’s nice to have an outlet for the knowledge he’s gained about this century, because none of his friends are excited and amused by basic facts like this. 

“I can get you more pizza.  What else do you want?” he continues.  Bucky shakes his head, and then pauses.

“Oh.  A fucking radio.”  He rolls his eyes, and Steve has no idea what’s going on with him tonight or why everything annoys him, even the things he wants. 

“Well, as it happens…” he trails off and then grabs the tablet triumphantly.  “This is a radio.” 

“Bullshit,” Bucky dismisses him.  Steve smirks to himself and opens the Pandora app.  He types in ‘Big Band,’ and seconds later, Benny Goodman is playing. 

“Huh,” is all that Bucky says.  He actually drifts closer and looks at the tablet for the first time. 

“Let me just show you how to change the station,” Steve cajoles. 

“Wait, wait,” Bucky asks.  He tosses his pizza crust on the floor and wipes his fingers on his pants.  “Give me a minute to digest.”

“Oookay,” Steve says.  Bucky backs up against the wall and slides down it until he’s sitting on the ground.  He folds his hand until he’s pointing with just his index finger, and he rests that on his lap.  He shuts his eyes for a few seconds, and then opens them again.

Steve watches, cataloging everything to sift through it later. 

Bucky looks at his hand and then closes his eyes again.  The next time he opens them, he stands up and looks at Steve expectantly. 

“You ready?” Steve asks. 

“Sure,” Bucky tells him.  He comes over to sit next to Steve on the bed and peers at the tablet.  He still looks distrustful, but he looks up at Steve and waits for him to talk. 

“So this is how you look up stations.  You can type in an artist, a song, a genre, anything.  Here, watch.”  He types in ‘Marvin Gaye,’ and “Sexual Healing” starts to play. 

“Okay, unfortunate song, but if you don’t like it, you can skip it,” he says with a laugh.  Bucky looks at the tablet with interest, and Steve pushes it into his hands. 

“It’s like a radio?” Bucky asks him, turning his face to meet Steve’s eyes.  There’s an incredulous smile on his face. 

Steve’s gut twists.  On a whim, he points to the pizza box. 

“Want more food?” he asks. 

“Sure,” Bucky says distractedly.  Now that Steve’s looking for it, he sounds different than he had a few minutes before.  If asked, though, Steve couldn’t describe _what’s_ different. 

Steve gets up and grabs them both a slice.  He hands one over, and Bucky accepts it.  They eat in silence while Bucky presses buttons on the tablet and accidentally goes back to the home screen.

“Oops,” he says, eyes widening like he thinks he’s broken it.  Steve reaches over and shows him how to bring Pandora back, but Bucky’s nervous now.  He pushes the tablet back at Steve. 

“No, it’s yours,” Steve says with a laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes.  He looks at the pizza in Bucky’s hand and notices that he’s managing to get it all in his mouth. 

“Do you like that?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says absently.

“You know what it is?”  Bucky frowns and squints.

“Definitely Italian.  It tastes familiar, but I don’t know what it’s called.” 

“It’s pizza,” Steve tells him.  His own pizza tastes like ash in his mouth.  “We had it in our time, but it didn’t become really popular until after the war.  It was all those American GIs stationed in Italy.” 

Should Steve tell someone about this, or is this the sort of thing that can get Bucky locked up permanently as a danger to himself and others? 

He spends another half-hour with Bucky, talking about music and vaguely touching upon other things that the tablet can do,

Sam comes over later that night when Steve’s watching infomercials and stress baking. 

“When I got your SOS, I figured you’d still be up,” Sam jokes, stepping into the kitchen and grabbing a napkin and several cookies. 

“Okay, I have my baked goods, and I’m ready to listen.  How is he?” Sam asks.  He sits beside Steve on the couch. 

“I don’t know,” Steve says after a minute.  Sam frowns. 

“You said that he’d started talking about being controlled and forced to do bad guy shit in the interview today,” Sam points out. 

“Yeah, he did.  It was…needed.  It was the first step of categorizing him as an unwilling participant.”

“So what’s the problem?” Sam asks with his mouth full of cookie.  Steve hesitates. 

“I need advice.  Depending on the advice you give me, I might ask you not to mention this to anyone.”

“Always something with you, Steve,” Sam tells him wryly.  “Fine.  What is it?”

“I think.  I think Bucky has something wrong with his short-term memory,” Steve says.  He rubs his eyes until he sees flashes of color behind his eyelids. 

“What does that mean?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” Steve reiterates.  “But.  But how much of all those months of him hanging out on the roof and watching me…how much of that was him not remembering the recent past and falling back on his old memories?”

“I can tell you have more.  Just spit it out, and we’ll deal with it,” Sam tells him a minute later after Steve’s worked his jaw and licked his lips several times over. 

“What if he’s somehow conditioned through torture to become the Winter Soldier?  And then he forgets about it?” Steve finally lays out his hypothesis. 

“Steve,” Sam starts.

“SHIELD’s not going to let him go if the memory trip is that easy,” Steve starts to work himself up again. 

“Hey, Hey.  Dude, you’re a great guy, but you ain’t no neurologist,” Sam calms him down with a hand on his arm. 

“Don’t go diagnosing.  That’s for people way smarter than us.  And your theory doesn’t even make sense.” 

“Yes it does,” Steve says a little stubbornly, because he’s been thinking about nothing else for hours. 

“Yeah, uh huh?  When did you get that psychology degree, Dr. Rogers?” Sam teases in his goofy voice, and Steve can’t help but laugh.  He needs it. 

“It might have been nothing, Steve.  Well, not _nothing_ , but not anything he can’t overcome, either.  PTSD does things to people.  I’ve seen shit like this at the VA with short-term memory problems.  The eggheads will figure it out, and they’ll help him.”

“So should I mention it?” Steve asks.  Sam bites his lip. 

“Maybe keep it on the down low?” he offers quietly.  “Just, uh, speed up his release.  And then we’ll deal it, the two of us.”

 

Bucky doesn’t like the psychologists.  They meet with him in a separate room, one without a two-way mirror, even though no one’s supposed to be monitoring Bucky 24/7 anymore.  Steve isn’t allowed in the room during the meetings, so he paces outside until Sharon comes by and demands that he accompany her to the shooting range. 

“Nice aim, neighbor,” he compliments her as she destroys the heart of target after target. 

“It’s gotta be nice.  I hear our building’s about to bump up a few security levels,” she tells him.  With Sharon, he can never tell if she’s fishing for information, or if she’s already more in the loop than he is. 

“Maybe.  If the shrinks clear him,” Steve says.  She hands him her pistol and he steps up to the line to finish the round. 

“So you don’t think he’s dangerous?” she asks conversationally.  Steve realizes that he doesn’t know her position on the Winter Soldier. 

“He’s been doing your job for months,” he jokes, then drowns out her response with gunfire.

“I guess I trust your bad-guy-meter,” she tells him when he hands the gun back and decides that he’s been away from the Psych wing for long enough. 

“I mean, I did figure out that SHIELD was a front for Hydra before you did,” Steve shrugs playfully.  She glares, and he leaves with a wave. 

He gets back just as Bucky’s going back to his cell.  He’s down to one guard, who thankfully falls behind as Steve gets into step with Bucky and steers him back to his wing.

“How’d it go?” Steve asks cheerfully.  Bucky scowls.

“I don’t like them.”

“I figured you wouldn’t.  Did they do anything that upset you, or were they just annoying in general?”

“They asked me how I feel about being tortured,” Bucky says with a frown.  “Why is that a question?”

“They just need to make sure that you’ll be okay when you come stay with me,” Steve tells him.  Bucky raises an eyebrow again, and Steve remembers his confusion the last time this had come up.

“I mean, you don’t have to.  But it won’t be that hard to get you released to an apartment with Captain America, a SHIELD agent living next door, and a PTSD counselor coming over every day.  It might take longer if you want to live somewhere else.  Which you totally can, completely up to you,” Steve rambles. 

Bucky doesn’t seem to be listening.

“PTSD – they tried to tell me that I have that in there.”  He looks like he doesn’t appreciate it. 

“It’s like combat stress reaction?  Or what your dad called shell shock?  Thousand-yard stare-”

“I don’t fucking have thousand-yard stare,” Bucky argues.  Except he does, sometimes. 

“Well, people now understand it a lot more, so PTSD is bigger thing.  It’s not just the panic and the fear.  It’s like,” he tries to remember how Sam had explained it.  “Your brain learns how to deal with scary and stressful situations really quickly, because otherwise, you won’t make it.  It copes.  But even after you’re safe, it’s hard to unlearn those brain patterns.  And that’s why war vets get to cover when they hear a car backfiring, or victims of abuse sometime flinch when someone comes too close.” 

Bucky eyes him dubiously.

“I coped with the shit that happened to me.”

“Great.  But can you stop coping, now that you’re out?”  Bucky looks pointedly at the guard trailing behind them and the windowless, armored hallways of SHIELD, and Steve has to acknowledge that this doesn’t feel very “out” to him, either.

Can Bucky truly heal, if he still thinks he’s a captive?

“I think my coping strategy is pretty permanent,” Bucky tells him wryly.  He falls silent for the rest of the trip back to his cell. 

“So, did they throw any other fancy psychological terms at you?” Steve asks after Bucky aggressively throws himself at his bed.  At least he’s using the pillows. 

“They talked about doctor-patient confidentiality,” Bucky tells him, and Steve flushes. 

“Sorry.  Sorry, that’s totally inappropriate of me,” he says, ashamed.  “I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”

“You were thinking of me like a problem that needs to be fixed, and you were wondering how much fixing I got today,” Bucky tells him from the bed.  Steve can’t see his face, and he’s back to sounding toneless. 

“Sorry,” Steve apologizes again.  “I’m just…I’m having trouble concentrating on anything _but_ you for a few minutes at a time.” 

Bucky raises his head at that, and he stares at Steve. 

“I’m not fixable,” he says after a minute.  It reminds Steve of what’d he said in his bedroom: ‘I’m lost.  For good.’

“Don’t be dramatic,” Steve tells him.  Bucky laughs darkly and sits up. 

“Why are you doing this?  I told you not to do this,” he says.  He sounds more irritated than toneless now, but Steve doesn’t think that’s an improvement. 

“Do what?”

“Steve,” Bucky nearly yells.  “I’m not your Bucky.  I’m not your friend.  I’m not your lover.  I’m not your soldier.  I’m just-”  He cuts himself off, and Steve only realizes that he’s tearing up when he sees Bucky wipe angrily at his eyes with his palm. 

“I’m really, really not the guy you think I am.  He’s been dead for a really long time.  I’m the freak leftover in his body.  And not even the whole thing,” he snarls, jerking his ruined shoulder in Steve’s direction.

“No, Bucky,” Steve says from where he’s standing by the door.  He starts to approach him, but Bucky shrinks back into the wall.  His eyes are red and wet, but he’s virulently angry. 

“And I’m a killer, like a trained dog.  And just-” He grapples in the air with his hand, like he can physically pull the words to him.  “Dirty and ruined.”

“Stop,” Steve orders. 

“I’m not the kind of fucked up that you fix,” Bucky spits at him.  “I’m the kind you send away, or if you’re smart, you put a bullet in its head.” 

Steve feels his nostrils flare.  He cuts off his next several responses, because Bucky doesn’t want to hear them.  Finally, he gets control over the impulse to blurt out that Bucky will never be unfixable to him, he’ll never be a lost cause, and Steve won’t stop trying to help him heal as much as it’s possible. 

He bites down on all these sentiments, until one that Bucky might be able to stomach floats to the surface. 

“Sometimes I think that the only reason I didn’t die in the plane crash, is because I’m the only one who can be there for you, with what happened,” he says.  Bucky glares at him and shakes his head so that he can use his hair for a shield. 

“I completely believe you,” Steve continues.  “I’m not trying to downplay how broken you feel, and I don’t believe that there’s a magic fix.  I know you’re not gonna be that that Brooklyn kid again.”  He inhales and exhales again. 

“I’m just trying to find any way that I can to get you out of here.  I don’t want you in something that feels like a prison.” 

Bucky turns his back on him.

“Go away,” he says tactlessly. 

“I’m coming back tomorrow,” Steve threatens.  “And the day after.  And the day after.  I won’t ask you what’s wrong with you, but I’m coming back.  Every day.” 

“Leave me alone,” Bucky growls.  So Steve turns on his heel and does just that. 

Except he can’t quite follow through.  He steps out of Bucky’s cell and immediately goes through the door that will take him behind the two-way glass.  There’s no one in here now, which makes it the perfect spot for a minor break-down before he pulls himself back to Captain America confidence. 

He sinks into a chair and bites his knuckles as a few stored-up sobs make their way out.  He’s not trying to watch Bucky through the glass, but he can’t help it.  Bucky’s staring at the door with a confused and almost childish look on his face. 

Steve, as usual, can’t interpret his moods.  He’d been the one to kick Steve out, so it’s beyond Steve why Bucky’s confused now.

Unless he wasn’t used to people actually leaving when he said that to them. 

“Damn it,” he swears, confronting yet again the immensity of the harm that’s been done to Bucky.  Just losing sight of it for a minute can have disastrous results. 

He gets his breathing under control and settles back to watch Bucky curl up into the fetal position on the bed.  He doesn’t look like he’s crying anymore either, but Steve can’t see his face.

“I don’t want to _fix_ you, I just want to _help_ you,” he says to the empty viewing room.  He’s glad that the sound only travels one way, but for a second, he wished it didn’t.  These are the words he’d meant to say back there. 

“I know you’re broken,” he says to Bucky through the soundproof glass.  “I know that I have to accept that, if I’m accepting you.  But can’t I also alleviate it _a little_?” 

Bucky obviously doesn’t hear his confession.  Some time later, he gets up and starts doing push-ups like nothing had happened. 

 

Steve stops by Dr. Ronaldo’s office before he goes to see Bucky the next day.  He’s aware that there’s something duplicitous in what he’s about to do, but he has to know.  He has to.  He just won’t tell Bucky. 

“How is he?” he asks the head psychologist assigned to Bucky’s case.  Or maybe she’s a psychiatrist.  He doesn’t quite know the difference. 

“Unfortunately Captain Rogers,” she starts.

“No, stop,” Steve says as he holds up a hand.  “I’m his next-of-kin on his enlistment paperwork.  Even if, in fact, especially if he’s not of sound mind, I’m the person you need to be talking to.” 

She purses her lips.

“It’s clear that you’re not actually his next-of-kin.  They may not have had ways of checking these things back in your time, but I can’t release any information to you.” 

Steve fumes.  He has several angry and uncharitable thoughts that Erskine would _not_ be happy about, and then he reins himself in.  He’s had to do that a lot, lately.

“What non-confidential things can you tell me?  Just, impressions, gut instincts.  Are you going to clear him sometime this month, or are we looking at several months?  A year?” 

Dr. Ronaldo hesitates 

“Please,” he begs her.  She clears her throat. 

“I’ve seen footage of the Battle of Washington.  And other footage of the Winter Soldier,” she starts.  Steve nods. 

“The man I spoke with yesterday doesn’t appear to share his traits.  Or his body language.  Or even his speech patterns.” 

“So, what does that mean for Bucky?” Steve asks. 

“It means I buy that he was brainwashed,” she replies frankly.

“So what now?”

“We have to start a process, which is confidential, of investigating any triggers.  We need to find out if he’ll activate again, or if he’s safe so long as he’s away from Hydra.”

“What do you mean ‘activate?’” Steve asks. 

“Like flipping a switch.  Turning something in his brain on or off.”

“You mean,” Steve pauses.  “Like he’s programmed, but the program isn’t running until someone turns it on?”

“That’s usually how latent brainwashing works,” she informs him. 

“How long will that take?” 

“It could be several months, or a year,” she admits.  Steve stares at her. 

“He can’t stay here for a year.  He’s spent the last seventy years in a cell; you have to let him out.” 

“Captain Rogers,” she says, but he barrels forward.

“He hates it here.  He needs to be able to move around, and make choices about what he wants to do, and sleep without the possibility of someone staring at him from behind-”

“Captain Rogers, I agree with you,” she interrupts.  He gapes at her, and she looks annoyed.  “Due to the extensive nature of the psychological treatment he’ll need, I agree with you that it’s cruel to keep him locked up during that time.  I’ve already put in my recommendation that he stay with you, albeit with some rules, while we work with him.”

Steve suddenly feels terrible for his earlier impulse to threaten her.

“Now, if you’re done, I believe Bucky’s been asking about you all morning.” And now Steve feels even worse. 

“Thanks,” he tells her, and then he practically sprints through the hallways until he gets to Bucky’s cell.  The singular guard lets him in, and Bucky looks up with wide eyes. 

“Hey,” Steve says as the door closes behind him.  He hovers near the doorway like yesterday, but quickly gives that up and walks to stand in front of the mirror. 

“Sorry for telling you to get out,” Bucky mumbles.  He ducks and rests his forehead on his knee. 

“Sorry for being such a dick that you had to kick me out,” Steve tells him.  Bucky turns his head and peers up at him from the strange angle, and Steve thinks that this is one of the days when he can approach Bucky. 

He walks up to the bed and sits down, leaving a few inches in between them. 

“I don’t know why I told you to get out.  Or why I told you to stay away from me,” Bucky tells him softly. 

“Because you think I’m going to give up on you anyway, so you’re trying to avoid being hurt later,” Steve answers.  He’s using the knowledge that Bucky had told him days ago in their written conversation, but he’s not pointing out that it had come from Bucky in the first place, so he thinks he’s keeping this particular promise. 

“Uh, yeah,” Bucky tells him with a small shake of his head as if to clear it.  “But what sense does that make?  I’m a fucking idiot.  It’s gonna hurt whether you get tired now, or whether you get tired in a month, so what’s the point?  I should just.  Just go along with it, I guess.  Enjoy it while it lasts.” 

Steve doesn’t know what he’s being offered, or if anything is being offered at all.  But he should probably go along with it too when Bucky is this amenable to his continued presence in his life. 

“A day, or a month?” he says.  “Do you think maybe a year?” 

“Maybe a year,” Bucky agrees tonelessly. 

“Or maybe five years?”  Bucky looks at him sideways. 

“Sure.  Maybe five years.” 

“Or maybe ten years?”

“If you say so, Steve,” Bucky tries to brush him off. 

“Ten years,” Steve repeats.  “Or maybe twenty years.  Should I keep counting?” 

“I don’t think I can die,” Bucky says suddenly.  He looks at Steve like he’s both afraid of the idea, and afraid of people knowing about it. 

“I don’t think I can die, either,” Steve says, and then, inexplicably, he starts laughing.  “I mean, I know we were both frozen…but we’re almost centenarians.”    

Bucky stares at him like he thinks Steve’s finally lost it. 

“It’s not funny, Steve.  Not dying isn’t funny.  It’s hell,” he insists. 

“It’s funny because it’s both of us!” Steve says through his laughter.  “Two hood rats from Brooklyn, and neither of us can die.  I told you I was uniquely qualified to put up with you!” 

 “I still don’t know why you’re laughing,” Bucky tells him, annoyed at Steve’s flippancy.  “People die for a reason, Steve.  Even you’re gonna want it to end at some point.  Living forever would stink, even if you do stick around.” 

The admission that maybe, _maybe_ Steve’s really in this makes Steve smile even as his mirth fades.  He grabs Bucky’s hand on impulse and holds it loosely in his, pressing their palms together. 

“We’re not going to live forever, Bucky.  Everything has a half-life, including the serum.  We’ll get there, eventually.” 

Bucky’s lips quirk into something like a smile, and Steve experiences a brand new emotion.  It’s a two-fold pull in his heart, where he’s feeling both the happiness of Bucky smiling at the _we’ll_ , and the smashing pain of Bucky smiling at the _die_. 

 

A week later, Tony manages to track down Dr. Strange.  Dr. Ronaldo seems put-out by the psychic’s presence in the facility, but Steve and Hill are thrilled the chance to expedite searching the landscape of Bucky’s mind. 

“He’ll be much faster at finding these triggers you keep talking about,” Hill tells an angry Ronaldo. 

“Psychics make the mind their personal playground and completely disregard the patients’ wellbeing regarding what they pry into.  Barnes isn’t ready for that kind of invasion.”

“We need his help.  You’re the one that told me that it could take months or years to find what’s buried in there.  You also told me he wasn’t being very cooperative.  So psychic it is.” 

“It’s a betrayal of his trust and confidentiality,” Dr. Ronaldo hisses.  She sees Steve leaning against the wall in the corner of Hill’s office. 

“Captain Rogers, as Bucky Barnes’ next-of-kin, surely you can’t consent to this invasive mental violation,” she coaxes.  Steve nearly spits out his coffee. 

“Wait, _now_ I qualify as a medical decision-maker?” he asks. 

“It’s happening,” Hill says brusquely.  “It’s the best way to figure out the source of his brainwashing and if anything will reactivate it.  Once we know that, then we can start working on making him a productive, non-violent member of society.” 

“I thought you wanted to at least entertain the idea of him becoming an Avenger?” Steve points out. 

“It’s on the table,” Hill replies with crossed arms. 

“That requires some level of violence.”

“Okay, both of you, get out of my office,” she orders.  Ronaldo still looks upset, but Steve grins as he leaves. 

He gets to Bucky’s cell and finds him sitting in the corner with his blanket around his shoulders.  Bucky’s tablet is playing the Beatles softly from his bed.

“You okay?” he greets him.  Bucky nods, and Steve decides not to say anything about the way he’s sitting. 

“Have they talked to you about the psychic yet?” Steve asks, sitting down on the bed and turning to face Bucky. 

He isn’t expecting Bucky’s face to go ashen. 

“No,” he says firmly.

“Okay, his name’s also Steve-”

“No,” Bucky repeats.  “No, no, no, _no_.”

Steve thinks about the best way to navigate this. 

“Can you hear me out?” he asks.  When Bucky doesn’t say anything, he continues. 

“Dr. Strange is a friend of Tony’s and some other mutual friends.  He’s a good guy, and he’s not going to hurt you.  Director Hill wants him to just spend some time with you so he can scan your mind and see if there are any words, or memories, situations that will trigger your brainwashing and make you like you were in Washington.” 

“Steve, I can’t,” Bucky insists.  Hesitantly, Steve finishes. 

“Once that happens, you can come home with me.  As early as tomorrow.  Sam helped me set up the guest room, and you’ll have your own space, but you can go anywhere in the apartment you want.  And we can go on outings.  Go see a baseball game, or maybe go to Brooklyn for the day.  It’s going to be great,” he offers. 

He sees Bucky raise his fingers to his mouth and touch the inside of his cheek.  He pulls the blanket tighter around himself and starts messing with his leg. 

“Dr. Strange isn’t going to tell anyone, including me, the specifics of what he sees in your mind.  He’s just going to do a sweep to confirm what everyone here knows, and that’s the last box checked.” 

Bucky continues to mess with his leg, and Steve frowns.  He puts his fingers back to his mouth, and Steve thinks he sees a flash of metal. 

“What did you just do?” he asks, panic building.  Bucky tucks his thumb against his palm, holding up four fingers, and then he closes his eyes. 

“Bucky, what did you just do??” he comes closer and sees shallow scratches beading with blood on Bucky’s leg underneath his rolled-up pant cuff. 

“Shit,” he swears, and looks closer before he runs for the door.  Somehow, Bucky’s scratched words into his leg with some sort of shiv he’s been concealing in his cheek, and Steve reacts on auto pilot.  He slams against the door and almost opens it, but then he thinks the next twenty minutes through. 

This isn’t going to get Bucky out of here.  This is going to make a case for why he needs to be locked up even longer.

But if Bucky’s harming himself, for whatever reason, then Steve would only be compounding that harm if he conceals it and takes Bucky away from the care he can get here. 

He wavers in indecision and then turns around.  He needs to know what exactly just happened before he calls in Dr. Ronaldo and her staff. 

“What does it say?” he asks more calmly than he feels.  Bucky’s eyes are open again, and he’s staring at Steve curiously.  He extends his leg so that Steve can see it before pulling the pant leg down. 

‘No psychic,’ it says. 

“Why in God’s name did you cut that into your skin??” Steve spits, anger and fear mixing in his voice. 

“Where’s the psychic?” Bucky asks tonelessly. 

“What. Are you.  Doing?” Steve demands.  Bucky gets to his feet. 

“If that psychic comes near me, I’ll kill them.” 

The gender-neutral pronoun catches Steve’s attention.  He just told Bucky that the psychic’s name is Steve Strange.  He flashes back to the night with the pizza and the tablet.  He hasn’t forgotten it, but he’s been distracted by other things.  He’s maybe also been hoping that it was just an isolated incident. 

This time he calls Bucky on it, because he’s angry and confused.  Sometimes, Bucky seems _frighteningly_ normal for a man who’s been imprisoned and forced to kill for seventy years.  And sometimes, Steve can’t begin to comprehend what’s going on behind his beautiful, haunted eyes. 

“I just told you _his_ name.  What the hell’s going on with your memory?” he hisses.  Bucky steps forward into his space. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, cruelly dismissing Steve.  He pushes their chests together and bares his teeth inches from Steve’s neck. 

“No weapons, one arm, and I can still think of thirty ways to kill him just off the top of my head.  Keep him away from me,” he growls. 

“Why?  What’s in your mind?” Steve shoots back.  His next though makes him sick.  “Oh my God, are you one of them?  Are you Hydra??”

“Fuck no,” Bucky sneers. 

“Then what the hell’s going on?” Steve screams in his face.  They have the same thought at the same time, and they turn their heads in unison to look up at the camera in the corner of the cell. 

“It’s off, I think,” Steve tells him.  He turns his head to look at the two-way glass seconds after Bucky does. 

He blinks, and then Bucky is throwing himself at the glass, crashing through and landing in a pile of shards in the other room. 

The cuts on his leg don’t seem so severe now. 

Luckily, there’s no one on the other side.  Steve assumes that someone’s heard the crash, but the door to Bucky’s cell and the door to the viewing room stay closed. 

He jumps after Bucky and lands in a crouch.  Unlike Bucky, he’s wearing shoes, so he doesn’t cut himself. 

He bends down and gets a knee on Bucky’s chest, and Bucky hisses as Steve grounds his back into the broken glass. 

“What don’t you want him to see?” Steve growls.  Bucky tries to throw him off, but he shifts his weight.  He cuts his knee through his jeans, but he doesn’t budge.  Bucky twists again, and Steve plays dirty by pushing against his damaged shoulder. 

“Tell me,” he demands. 

He isn’t expecting Bucky to surge up and kiss him.  To say it’s rough is an understatement; Bucky slams their faces together, catching Steve’s bottom lip with an incisor, and he keeps his lips stagnant as he tries to rub them against Steve’s. 

It’s like he’s never kissed anyone before, and Steve’s mind whites out before he can figure out Bucky’s latest strategy. 

Because that wasn’t a random terrible kiss.  He wants something. 

“That’s why,” Bucky tells him bitterly.  “I don’t want him to see that.”  He finally succeeds in bucking Steve off, and Steve rolls into the glass at his side. 

“Bucky, what the hell.  It’s legal now.”  Bucky squints at him. 

“It is?”  Steve lunges at him while his mouth is open.  He gets a finger on the metal piece on Bucky’s mouth, and gets bitten for his efforts. 

“Let go, or I will punch you,” he yelps.  He finally pulls a swollen and bloody finger out of Bucky’s mouth, along with the fork tine he’d gone after in the first place. 

He flings it to the side and glares at Bucky as he puts some distance between them. 

“Strange will not care about that, I promise you.  If that’s what’s preventing you from getting security clearance and coming home with me, that’s nothing.” 

“I don’t want him to know,” Bucky says through clenched teeth. 

That’s when Hill slams through the door, gun drawn, with a stampede of armed agents behind her. 

“What the fuck, Steve?” she yells as she surveys the damage and the two super soldiers crouching amid the remains of the two-way mirror. 

He sighs and gives Bucky a sideways look. 

“We need to talk about Strange,” he tells her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, the personality credits. All scenes not listed feature Bucky.
> 
> Yasha - Shows up when Bucky has a flashback during an interrogation
> 
> Axel - Sketchbook writing
> 
> Asset - Tablet scene, then fight/kiss at end


	3. Interloper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience! A lot’s been going on – I’m participating in the Big Bang, I co-wrote [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2153814/chapters/4707264) which was an amazing but unexpected experience, and real life has been relentless. 
> 
> Also, some of you may have noticed that this story and Chyetirye now have banners. I just learned how to make them and got unnecessarily intense about doing so. They are not very fancy and represent the absolute extent of my creative capacity. If you are a creative person and my simplistic collages offend you, do feel free to suggest something else creative to go in their place.

Steve gets to take Bucky home two weeks later with an ankle monitor, a schedule for meeting with Dr. Ronaldo, and a healthy level of suspicion. 

Steve understands that he’s basically risked his entire position within SHIELD, and the Avengers by extension, by vouching for Bucky.  Even Hill, who’s had his back for years, grits her teeth when he explains why Strange can’t examine Bucky. 

“Look, there are some things in his past, things that I know about and that I swear aren’t dangerous, and he isn’t willing to divulge them.  Please just let me take him.  I’ll monitor him day and night.  I can be objective about him,” he begs. 

“Steve,” she says with a migraine-worthy sigh.  “Are you serious?  He just proved that he’s still aggressive and impulsive, and I’m sorry, but it’s a huge red flag that he won’t let the psychic near him.”

“He needs to be with _me_ ,” Steve argues.

“You two attacked each other,” she argues back with an incredulous look. 

“He doesn’t like the SHIELD agents, or the psychologists, or anyone you have here.  I’ve known him since we were children, and I can contain him in the event that he gets violent.  I have Agent Carter next door, and codename Falcon coming over every day with PTSD counseling experience.

“Tony Stark can build me anything I want, Agent Romanov knows Bucky’s case as well as you do, and.  And Bruce!  Bruce is practically a psychologist, and he knows all this stuff about meditation, and anger issues, and trauma.”

“What are you telling me, Steve?” she asks in exasperation. 

“I’m saying that the best place for Bucky, the actual best place, not just the most comfortable or the place where I want him, is with me.  He’ll respond to us.  I know he will, just give it a chance.” 

“You know I can’t do that.  Almost no one at SHIELD believes that he’s not playing us, and, just in case you’ve forgotten, we recently discovered that a third of our organization was an international terrorist group.  And then _another_ third jumped ship after the splinter.  So no, I’m sorry, I can’t pile one more doubt on top of that.”  She turns to go, and Steve stops her. 

“I’ll go to Fury,” he threatens, reluctantly but with complete seriousness. 

So now they’re here.  Hill’s done going to bat for him, and he realizes that this can break SHIELD even further if the naysayers turn out to be right. 

He knows they’re not.  But he also knows that Bucky has secrets.  The boy who used to be an open book, and who’d been so honest even in his pranks and his ‘borrowing,’ is now a mystery that Steve _needs_ to solve to keep a lot of people, including Bucky, safe.    

So he keeps notes.  He buys an extra tablet and doesn’t connect it to the internet, so Stark and others can’t reach in.  He password protects it and hides it between folded t-shirts. 

He records the things that Bucky does that snag against his mind, and he stays up most nights pouring over his notes and looking for patterns. 

He looks over the Winter Soldier file for the hundredth time.  He rereads his notes from his conversation with Dr. Ronaldo. 

He loves Bucky like a friend, brother, and lover all rolled into one, but he watches him like a SHIELD agent. 

 

Sam drives the two old soldiers back to Steve’s apartment in his Civic while Steve attempts to make stilted conversation with Bucky from the front seat.  Bucky alternates between pulling apart the split ends of his hair and staring out the window, and Sam eventually flips the radio on to an R&B station to drown out Steve’s questions about what Bucky wants to do and eat and wear. 

‘Too many choices, too soon,’ he texts Steve when they’re sitting at an intersection.  As Steve reads it, Sam clears his throat and pitches his voice above the music. 

“Barnes, we’re eating in two hours, okay?”  Steve cranes his neck to see Bucky nodding at Sam’s words.  Steve opens his mouth to ask what Bucky wants for dinner, but Sam glares at him as he eases his foot off the brake. 

They’ve talked about easing Bucky into civilian life several times over the past two weeks, but Steve has a mental block about coddling him.  He’s so used to thinking of Bucky as a rock, and he knows how much Bucky values his independence even when he’s hurt or sick, so Steve’s mind keeps rebelling against Sam’s clear instructions. 

But being in Bucky’s presence always seems to enforce what Sam says about PTSD and POW rehabilitation.  As stubborn as he is, he’s out of practice in everything from making decisions about what he wants to eat, to hygiene, to basic conversational rules.  And whenever he catches himself stumbling over something that comes naturally to the people around him, he winces and bites his lip or his knuckles. 

So Steve leaves the question about dinner alone and plans a nice meal of steak and potatoes and greens that he hopes Bucky will like.  Until Bucky gets comfortable with having a wider range of preferences, he’ll just have to fall back on what he remembers. 

Not that they’d ever had steaks like the ones currently thawing on Steve’s counter.  But it’s close enough. 

Sam parallel parks in front of Steve’s building, swearing at the obnoxious Lexus that buzzes by while he’s still backing up, and Steve climbs out hoping that Bucky won’t need a direct command for that, too. 

Luckily, Bucky follows his lead and gets out of the car, craning his neck up to see the building across the street from which he’d staked out Steve’s apartment.  Steve does the same thing by muscle memory, unable to forget the mixed feeling of relief and worry he’d harbored for months when he’d known who was up there and why he wouldn’t come down. 

“It’s nicer inside,” Steve jokes lamely, scratching the back of his head when Bucky just looks at him and hefts his bag over his good shoulder.  “Come on up.”

All of Bucky’s belongings came to him in SHIELD’s detention facility, and they fit into a duffel bag which Bucky insists on carrying himself.  There’s a few pairs of sweatpants, t-shirts, and boxer shorts that Steve had purchased, the StarkTablet from Tony, and a stress ball and ear plugs from Sam.  It’s not much, and Steve assumes that Bucky has more clothing and a weapons cache stashed somewhere in DC.  He can’t access it, though; the ankle monitor will call a SHIELD team if Bucky leaves the apartment’s coordinates or wanders more than five feet away from Steve’s biometric signature. 

Steve unlocks the front door and holds it open for Bucky and Sam to enter.  He spots Sharon conveniently arriving at the mailboxes just at that moment, and she smiles at the three of them as she opens her mailbox and pulls out a few envelopes. 

“Oh, hey guys,” she says casually.  Steve gives her an unimpressed look, but Sam returns her smile. 

“Hello ma’am,” he flirts.  She raises an eyebrow saucily, and Sam leans against the mailboxes.  “Get anything good?” 

“Just some bills and a letter from Aunt Peggy.  I specifically asked her for more embarrassing stories about Steve, so I’m hoping it’s good,” she says with a devious grin. 

Sam and Sharon have been dancing around each other for months without any real intent, likely because Sharon’s married to her work and Sam has something on-again off-again with a girl named Leila in Harlem.  But sometimes they distract each other enough for Steve to get a breather from the constant eyes of his two bodyguards (one official and one self-appointed), and he hopes that this is one of those times.  He wants to get Bucky settled in when it’s just the two of them.

He gently puts a hand at the small of Bucky’s back to propel him onwards to the staircase, but Bucky doesn’t move forward.  He’s staring at Sharon, slack-jawed.

“Peggy, as in Agent Carter?  You’re her niece?” he asks.  Steve can’t place the expression flickering across Bucky’s face, but he assumes it’s shock at finding pieces of their past embedded in this new time and place.  It still shocks Steve sometimes that Peggy had already been an old woman when Sharon was born, and that his neighbor had grown up playing with Peggy’s perfume and scarves and, probably, her pistols. 

“She’s my great aunt.  I guess you knew her in her prime, too,” Sharon says, dropping the disinterested mail-checker act.  She actually looks interested in Bucky’s memories of Peggy, but Bucky look uncomfortable. 

“I did.  She was…a looker,” he says.  With that, he moves forward, and Steve’s hand falls through the air and back to his own side. 

“I’m gonna go show him around,” Steve says with a smile and a glance at Sam silently asking him to take his time.  Sam holds up five fingers on his left hand, and Steve nods, grateful, before following Bucky. 

Bucky does know where he’s going, because he’s visited Steve once before.  By the time Steve steps onto his floor, Bucky is already standing in front of the apartment door and staring at the doorknob like he’s debating breaking in. 

Steve has to stand directly behind him, nearly plastering himself to Bucky’s back, while he unlocks the door, and something in his heart unclenches when Bucky doesn’t react to the proximity. 

“Can’t believe she’s related to Peggy.  Makes sense, though,” he mumbles.  It doesn’t make sense to Steve, but he makes a mental note to record it later and steps into the entryway behind Bucky. 

“Want the tour?” Steve asks, toeing off his sneakers.  Bucky watches him and does the same with his boots.  He looks around but doesn’t answer, so Steve takes his duffle bag and leads the way forward. 

“So this is the living room, which you’re pretty familiar with.  Over there is a bathroom and the laundry room.  That’s a closet,” he points, “and this is the kitchen-dining area.  Everything’s pretty open out here, and you can use whatever space you want.” 

Bucky’s eyes follow his finger, but he doesn’t seem to have any comments or questions, so Steve continues the tour. 

“The bedrooms are back here,” he leads.  “This is my bedroom, which, well, you’ve been there.  This is your bedroom.  That’s an office, though I really just use it for clutter and free weights.  And this is the bathroom,” he says as he flips on the bathroom light.  The apartment only has one shower, and the bathroom’s two doors open both into Steve’s bedroom and to the hallway across from Bucky’s door. 

“The locks don’t really work because it’s an old building,” Steve says with a grin at the word ‘old,’ but if you’re in there with the door closed, I’ll leave you alone.  If I’m showering and you need to pee, the bathroom in the living room has a toilet and a sink.”

“Can I use the shower?” Bucky asks, eyeing the frosted glass door.  The old door had been completely clear, but Steve had shattered it after a particularly rough day with Bucky at SHIELD.  It had been Natasha’s idea to get something that offered a little more privacy after Bucky’s stint with the two-way mirror. 

“You mean now, or in general?  Well, yes to both,” Steve clarifies.  He hopes that Bucky knows he’s allowed to use the shower, as well as anything else in the apartment. 

“Now,” Bucky requests. 

“Uh, sure,” Steve answers with a shrug.  He knows that Bucky wiped himself down before leaving the facility today, but it’s probably a psychological thing.  SHIELD certainly makes his own skin crawl sometimes, and he wasn’t their prisoner for a month.  “Let me show you your room first, and then I’ll grab you some towels.” 

Bucky follows him the few steps into the former guest room and handles the light switch this time.  The overhead light illuminates a small room with a thin, stained-glass window, a queen-sized bed covered in a blue comforter, a dresser, and a wooden chair in the corner. 

Steve’s fretted over what to put on the walls and what decorative touches to add, but he genuinely has no idea what would make Bucky happy versus what would annoy him.  It’s not like they’d ever had the expendable income for fancy tchotchke, so their walls had been covered with Steve’s scribbles for as long as he can remember.  And he doesn’t want to bother Bucky with his well-intentioned sketches of Brooklyn or the European theater, but he also doesn’t think Bucky would appreciate still lifes of fruit and landscapes, things that have been denied to him until now. 

“Uh, you can change whatever you want.  Put up stuff, or not.  This is your space,” he tries to make clear.  Bucky ignores him and goes to fiddle with the lock on the window. 

“Remember, you can’t leave the apartment without me,” Steve orders without thinking.  Bucky turns to scowl at him, and Steve winces.  “Sorry.  I just meant.  It’s only temporary,” he stumbles.  “Let me get you some towels.” 

Fifteen minutes later, Steve hears the sound of the shower running as Sam lets himself into the apartment.  Steve’s sitting on the couch, head in his hands, playing back the last thirty minutes in his head.  He’s never sure these days whether his interactions with Bucky are successful or not, and he sometimes tries so hard that he probably irritates or embarrasses Bucky.  He can’t do that if they’re going to be sharing a space and seeing each other near-constantly. 

“So, how was the house arrest initiation?” Sam asks.  He drops onto the couch at Steve’s right. 

“Think it went okay.  Thanks for not hovering,” he says with genuine gratefulness.  Sam picks up a coaster from the coffee table and bounces it against Steve’s bicep. 

“Not a problem.  The lovely Miss Carter did indeed have some stories.  Want to hear?” Sam asks innocently. 

“Can you…not mention Sharon in front of Bucky?” Steve requests, because maybe that explains Bucky’s behavior earlier.  It clearly throws Sam. 

“Why?” he asks, confused.  Then his eyes light up.  “Oh, _tell_ me there’s some Springer shit there, Steve.” 

“There isn’t,” Steve denies too quickly.  Sam cackles.  “Look, pipe down.  I’m just not sure what he remembers, and there was a little bit of bad blood between them.  It wasn’t a big deal, but maybe he remembers it being more than it was.” 

“Tell me,” Sam commands, still grinning.  He puts his feet up in an obvious show of parking and waiting. 

Steve works his jaw.  Sam’s laughing, but the details of this story are intrinsically personal.  Probably not by the modern world’s standards, but that just means that Steve needs to explain everything, lest Sam misunderstand and judge anyone involved too harshly. 

“Back in the 30s and 40s, if you were a guy and you liked guys…” Steve trails off, blushing. 

“You’re not going to offend my delicate sensibilities, Cap,” Sam tells him sarcastically.  “You can talk about being gay, or bi, or however you identify.” 

“That’s the thing.  It wasn’t an identity then.  It was something that you did.  And people definitely judged it and condemned it on a lot of levels, but the idea of being something didn’t exist.”

“Okay,” Sam prompts. 

“So the common perception was, if guys were into that, they were still ‘normal’ with some extra preferences.  So there had to be a reason why they did that, and there were a lot of ideas.  One was that punks did it because they were looking for someone to take care of them.  Money and food were hard to come by; maybe that is why some guys did it,” Steve admits. 

“Punks?”  Steve flushes again. 

“Uh, little guys with feminine qualities.  Like being 95-pounds and blonde.”  It takes Sam a moment, but then he laughs. 

“I still can’t believe it whenever I see pictures.  But they shot you up with serum and that obviously changed.”

“Right.  So the few people that knew got it when I was little, but they didn’t get why Bucky and I were still together after I changed.  Peggy was one of those people, and she spoke her mind.  I love that about her, but she didn’t get me and Bucky.  She thought that I still felt obligated to him for taking care of me, or something of the sort, and she tried to get me to see that I didn’t need him anymore.”

“Ouch.  Barnes find out?” 

“He did, and he didn’t understand that she really was trying to look out for me.  He knew, well, they probably both knew that I’d have fallen for her in a hot second if Bucky weren’t in the picture.  So it was just strained between them.  No bickering or anything serious, but kind of tense to be around them both.  Does that make sense?” 

Sam raises his eyebrows.  “Please.  You think two ladies have never fought over Sam Wilson before?  I feel what you’re saying.” 

“No, that’s not what happened,” Steve groans as he gets to his feet and pads into the kitchen, ignoring Sam’s laughter behind him.  He should probably get dinner started if he’s going to stick to Sam’s established dinner time.

The shower continues to run as he washes potatoes, and he wonders if Bucky’s going to stay in there until they eat. 

 

* * *

 

Bucky closes his eyes under the hot spray of the shower, turning his face up and opening his mouth to let the warm water fall against his tongue like soft machine gun fire.  He holds his throat closed and lets his mouth fill with water, then purses his lips and spits a stream back at the shower head.  Then he does it again.  And again. 

Even though the SHIELD prison hadn’t been cold, he really only feels warm inside a shower.  It’s the same with feeling clean.  He’s properly alone for the first time since he surrendered, and even though he knows Steve and probably Sam are outside the bathroom, probably talking about him because they seem to find him endlessly interesting, he likes the chance to do something pointless and even juvenile like this. 

He spits again.  He likes the stretch in his jaw, holding and spitting.  He likes the feeling of his hair plastered to the back of his head, finally out of his eyes.  He likes the cold tile under his fingertips.  He likes drawing pictures in the steam on the glass door.  He draws them, Yasha with crossed eyes and his tongue sticking out, Axel with glasses and his hands on his hips, and the asset with an angry scowl and a knife dripping blood.  He tries to add himself, but he doesn’t know what to draw. 

Maybe one of the others will.  He’s probably had enough time in here, and it would be the decent thing to let them take their turn.  Even though this shower isn’t going anywhere, and he can probably use it whenever he wants, it would be nice to share.  He remembers having to share with Rebecca faintly, and it occurs to him that the four of them have never really had anything worth sharing.

But he wants to be a brother who shares, so he crouches down on the floor of the shower and closes his eyes.  Sometimes they’re fairly seamless at transitioning while their body is standing up, but sometimes there’s a delay of a few seconds, and they know this because they’ve collapsed or stumbled during the window when no one’s holding up their muscles and bones. 

The last thing Bucky wants is to fall in the shower and bring Steve tearing into the room with concern carved into his face, so he crouches and lets himself drift. 

Then he’s standing in the other apartment – the one that’s not Steve’s, but was once, where he and his fucked up family reside now.  The outer edges are as blurred as ever, but Yasha and the asset are sitting on the floor next to the green couch and playing the story game.  Whenever it’s Yasha’s turn, he makes it sexual, and whenever it’s the asset’s turn, he makes it bloody. 

They’ve had to invent about a dozen games to pass the time in here, and this is one of Bucky’s favorites.  He nearly always wins, because he has movies and stories from Brooklyn to pull from, but Yasha and the asset are well-matched. 

“She bends over to pick up the key, and Alexei’s eyes bulge out when he sees that she isn’t wearing any underwear,” Yasha supplies with a dirty smile. 

“Because she is wearing a knife holster.  She has a knife strapped to each thigh.  Alexei realizes that he is going to die,” the asset snaps. 

“She stands up.  ‘Tell me you didn’t see my secret knives!  Oh, no one can know that I am trying to avenge my father’s death!  What do I need to do for you to keep quiet?’ she begs?”

“’I need you to prove that you are not a threat to me.  Take your knife, and poke out one of your eyes.  You may choose which one,’ he says.” 

 “That’s disgusting,” Yasha complains. 

“The rules are that I can’t kill anyone in the first hundred turns.  I didn’t,” the asset growls back.  “Take your damn turn.” 

Bucky laughs.  He sits next to Yasha and flexes the fingers of the hand that still exists in his mind.  There are no empty sockets and hideous holes here. 

“Tatiana gasps, grabbing at her heart.  ‘I won’t!  My eyes are too beautiful!’ she insists.  But then she undoes the buttons on her dress.  ‘I have a much better idea,’” Yasha says with a grin. 

“Alexei takes out his gun and shoots her in the foot.  ‘Let’s try that again.  Take out your knives.’”

“Slowly, Tatiana reaches under her skirt and grabs both knives by their hilts.  She lifts them up and then plunges them into Alexei’s chest.  ‘You killed my father!’ she screams.”

“Oooh, didn’t see that coming,” Bucky interjects. 

“Why can you kill people but I can’t?” the asset complains.  “Fine.  Alexei gurgles as his throat fills up with blood.  He looks at Tatiana, and she licks the blood from a knife.  He falls to the ground like a bag of grain.  Tatiana gets into her car and heads for her next victim.” 

Bucky settles in to listen, making comments whenever they violate the rules or the story takes a particularly interesting turn.  Eventually, Yasha disappears, and Axel shows up. 

They talk about Steve’s apartment and the tour, while the asset wants to know about the dreaded ankle monitor.  He disappears eventually, and Yasha comes back raving about the soap in the shower. 

Bucky drifts to the top again lazily.  His drawings are mostly steamed away, but other steam graffiti has taken their place.  He rinses out his mouth again and drifts under. 

“Is Sam going to be around all the time?” the asset asks. 

“I don’t know.  He doesn’t have a room here, but maybe he sleeps with Steve,” Bucky answers.  He feels jealousy flush hot in his stomach, but it doesn’t make any sense, because he learned today that Steve and Peggy Carter’s blonde niece are together. 

Of course they’re together.  It makes far more sense than most things in his life do these days.  She’s beautiful, dangerous, and a Carter – the Carole Lombard to Steve’s Clark Gable. 

He drifts back to the top.  Their body is curled up on the floor of the shower now because they’re switching too rapidly to keep crouching and standing up, and this feels nice too.  The water pressure is lessened, but it’s hitting his entire body now.  He drifts under.

“Can I be on top for dinner?  I’ve never had steak,” Yasha asks. 

“Are you going to run your fucking mouth?” Bucky asks unkindly.  Axel scolds him for it. 

He drifts back to the top.  He’s sitting up now, and his hair is in his eyes again.  On an impulse, he gets out of the shower long enough to find scissors in a drawer, and he indolently cuts at it back under the spray.  He’s clumsy with the scissors because he’s forced to use his right hand, but he gets the hang of it.  Navigating with one arm is inconvenient but not hard.  He’s done it before. 

He does find it to be extremely unfair, however.  Yasha and Axel are right-handed, and the asset is ambidextrous.  He’s the one most inconvenienced by the fact that SHIELD pulled the metal arm out of his body, and he misses it. 

Steve wouldn’t want to hear that, though.  In his eyes, the arm was evil even before it turned against Bucky.  Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him about the relief he felt when Lukin’s people fixed him and he wasn’t broken anymore.  At least not physically. 

He drifts under.

“We can get the ankle thing off with a saw,” the asset is saying.

“Where do you think we’re going to get a saw?” Yasha asks.  He sees Bucky.  “And why is your hair short?” 

“I cut it,” Bucky says simply.  The asset explodes. 

He drifts back to the top.  Someone is pounding on the door, and the water is starting to get cold. 

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice floats through the door.  “Are you okay?”  Bucky doesn’t answer, and seconds later, the bathroom door is opening.  Bucky’s eyes catch on the remnants of drawings and messages between him and his alters, and his heart lurches at the incriminating detail. 

“Get out!” he shrieks, springing to his feet and nearly losing his balance.  He flings the shower door open and glares at Steve. 

“I’m sorry!  It sounded like you weren’t moving for a while…” Steve trails off.  Bucky sees his glance start to travel down Bucky’s body, but Steve visibly jerks his eyes upwards.  Bucky looks down his own body to see his johnson standing at half-mast, but that detail pales in comparison to the fact that Steve is still in the bathroom. 

“You told me I’d have privacy in here,” he snaps, picking up the scissors from the shower floor and flinging them in Steve’s direction.  He’s not aiming for Steve, so he’s not surprised when they miss, but Steve goes ashen. 

“Get out!” Bucky yells again.  He sees another flash of Steve looking shocked before the door closes, and he thinks that he’s sufficiently distracted Steve from the damning evidence on the shower door.  He frantically wipes it away with his hand, splashing it over and over to make sure it’s all gone, and then he finally admits that it’s probably time to get out of the shower. 

He picks up the globs of hair from the drain with waterlogged fingers and then dries himself off.  He doesn’t do a very thorough job, and he’s still dripping when he wraps the towel around his waist and leaves the safety of the steamy bathroom to go back to…his room.  His cell?  Neither word really feels right.  Steve’s whole apartment is now effectively a cell, so it’s his area.  The idea of having a room is tinged with too much ownership, and he’s never had one of those.  Not even in his old life. 

He sees Sam and Steve staring at him during his brief stint in the hallway, and he only realizes why when he’s rummaged through the duffle bag and stepped into his underwear. 

He probably shouldn’t have thrown the scissors at Steve.  Goddammit, he’d be furious if one of the others had come close to harming Steve, and they wouldn’t hear the end of it for days. 

But he’d panicked.  He’s already fucked up his first night here, and it can’t happen again.  He can’t give Steve one more reason to regret agreeing to take Bucky into his home and deal with someone who’s so broken that they lash out against the only good thing in their life. 

He and the others just can’t do anything like that – sending trivial messages in the topside world – ever again.   

After he’s fully dressed, he towels what’s left of his hair and smoothes it so it falls to one side of his head.  It’s a little past his ears now, but it doesn’t feel as choppy as he’d expected.  Axel probably fixed his haphazard cutting because that’s what he always does – he fixes all of their mistakes and solves their problems. 

Bucky trusts Axel to look out for him like he’s never trusted anyone – not Yasha, not the asset, not even Steve.  Maybe it’s because Axel was his first brother, and maybe it’s because Axel is _Axel_ , but their bond is deeper than trust.  It’s faith, even though Bucky stopped having faith in the world outside his mind a long time ago. 

So if Axel tells him to do something, like let Yasha on top for dinner, then he’ll do it.  He’ll grumble in his mind, but he’ll do it. 

And maybe Yasha is a better Bucky for this new form of captivity.  Instead of throwing scissors and choking on his words when Steve treats him a little too much like a human being and demands that he make all sorts of choices with nothing to go on, Yasha will be a good little soldier. 

And that’s maybe what they need to make this work.  It’s not that he thinks Steve is going to toss him out on the doorstep or, fuck, send him back to SHIELD, because Steve wouldn’t do that.  But Bucky won’t overstay his welcome.  As soon as he senses that Steve can’t handle his lies and his issues and all of the ways he’s different from _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes_ , then he’ll leave. 

But maybe if Yasha smiles and simpers a little, it will make Steve happy.  Maybe they’ll get to stay longer. 

When Bucky doesn’t have an excuse for being in the room any longer, he sighs, sits on the edge of the too-soft bed, and holds out three fingers.  He closes his eyes to let Yasha float to the surface.    

 

* * *

 

Steve can feel Sam’s eyes on his back, but he pretends to be consumed with flipping the steaks and sliding the cast iron pan back into the oven. 

“You left scissors where he could get to them?” Sam mutters darkly behind him. 

“I think I can withstand a pair of scissors,” Steve says levelly as he shuts the oven door and finally turns around.  “But yeah, I didn’t hide anything.  There’s still a gun in my bedroom drawer, and I’m still going to give him a knife at dinner.”

“It’s not just your safety I’m worried about, man.  Or mine for that matter – and I take my safety very seriously.  It’s not uncommon for people in his position, or something like it at least, to self-harm.  He didn’t have anything deadly with him when he was with SHIELD – you could at least wait a few hours before letting him be alone in the room with scissors and your razor _for almost two hours_.”  The look on Sam’s face is grumpiness mixed with worry, but this is one area where Steve does actually think he can trust Bucky. 

“If Bucky wanted to hurt himself, you think he wouldn’t find a way?  He doesn’t even seem to feel pain!  Or you think he would have let himself literally rot from the inside out where that damn Department X machine was plugged into him?”  He turns his back again as he checks the potatoes.  Thankfully, they’re soft enough to mash, and he needs to do something to get his frustration out. 

Because he does believe that Bucky would have already made a move if he wanted to hurt himself.  And he doesn’t think Bucky would have ever agreed to turn himself into SHIELD if that had been his plan. 

But he can’t forget the fork tine and the strange message carved into Bucky’s leg back in his cell.  The wounds were only deep enough to last a few minutes, so he doesn’t think they were intended to hurt.  They were intended to…focus?  To remind him in the event that he blanked out the past few minutes again? 

To send a message to his brainwashed “self” when it woke up? 

Except he can’t figure out what would have triggered it.  He’s read books and medical journal articles on brainwashing victims whenever he wasn’t with Bucky or sleeping over the past two weeks, and he’s gone over the scene in his head countless times. 

Bucky carved his leg.  Bucky attacked him.  Between those two events, Steve said ‘why in God’s name did you carve that into your skin?’ and ‘what are you doing?’  He’s dropped all of those words in Bucky’s presence very purposefully, and they never triggered him alone or in combination. 

So _why_ had he done it? 

He realizes that Sam’s still talking to him as he furiously pounds the potatoes into mush, and he catches the tail end of Sam saying “…you can’t ignore this – you need to talk to him and find out why he threw them.”

“He threw them because he wanted me to get out.  God, I’m already bothering him and violating his privacy,” Steve complains as he throws the wooden spoon into the sink more forcefully than necessary.  He surveys his spices and is picking a few at random when he hears Bucky walking over the creaky floorboards in the hallway.  Sam shoots him a glance, and Steve widens his eyes, begging him silently to leave it alone. 

“Hello,” Bucky says softly.  He hovers uncertainly on the edge of the kitchen area, and Sam and Steve turn in unison to face him fully. 

His hair is shorter than it had been this afternoon, which Steve already knew from the bathroom.  It falls over one side of his head, and the water droplets make it look darker than he’s used to.  His skin looks damp and prune-y, but that just makes his eyes stand out even bluer.  He’s wearing the same sweatpants and ‘Rebuild Washington Project’ t-shirt from earlier, which is ironic, but something looks off about him. 

It isn’t the empty arm socket, because Steve’s already used to that.  It isn’t the gradually leaning muscles, because he’s used to that too.  After a few moments, he realizes that it’s because Bucky is smiling. 

It takes Steve aback, because he can count the number of times he’s seen Bucky smile in this century one one hand.  And it’s not a full smile, only folding half of his mouth upwards like he’s not sure it’s the correct facial expression. 

But he’s not scowling, and he’s not telling Steve to get away.  Probably best to pretend nothing happened and then note it down later. 

“Hey.  Dinner’s almost ready.  You want water or something else to drink?” he asks, following the question format that Sam had drilled into him while Bucky showered.  Give him one option that’s easy to grasp onto and one option that communicates his agency.  Steve can make himself remember to do this. 

“Water,” Bucky requests, just like Steve had assumed. 

“I want a beer,” Sam announces. 

“You know where they are,” Steve shoots back.  Sam grumbles about his hosting skills while he raids the refrigerator, and Bucky continues to hover at the edge of the space, tentative.  

Steve fills a glass with water and hands it to Bucky.  “Take a seat.  You want me to cut your steak up for you because, uh, the arm?”  Sam shakes his head from behind the refrigerator door, but Steve already knows how insensitive that was. 

Luckily, Bucky doesn’t look offended by his gaffe. 

“Yeah,” he says over his shoulder as he sits down at the kitchen table and stares at the wood grain. 

He doesn’t say anything else during dinner, but he eats like he’s starving, and he looks at Steve a few times with that crooked smile, so Steve considers it to be the first win of the day. 

After they eat, Sam leaves for the evening with incredibly clear reservations, and Steve and Bucky sit at opposite ends of the couch and stare at each other.  Bucky holds his gaze, looking raptly interested in whatever Steve has yet to say, but Steve feels his throat close up and his palms start to sweat. 

This is even harder than it had been in the cell.  There, he could always ask Bucky about his day, and they could make small talk about their shared memories, but it feels different when they’re truly alone without a time limit. 

Then it comes to him. 

“Wait here,” he tells Bucky.  Then he tacks a soft “please” on to soften the order.  Bucky hasn’t moved when he walks out of his bedroom and back into the living room with a waxy cardboard box covered in yellowed tape bearing Bucky’s name, rank, and serial number. 

He sets it softly on the coffee table in front of Bucky. 

“I don’t know if you’re ready for this yet, but this is your stuff from your pack.”  Bucky looks at him blankly.  “It…wasn’t on you when you fell.  It was back at the little camp we set up, and the Army took so long to ship it back to your family that I guess they never knew where to pick it up.” 

Bucky looks wide-eyed at the box. 

“What’s in it?” he asks. 

“Most of the personal stuff you had on you in Europe.  You can open it now, or whenever you choose.”

Bucky hesitates, running his finger along the yellowed tape and pursing his lips. 

“I shouldn’t,” he says. 

“Okay,” Steve replies evenly.  Apparently the box is out, but maybe Bucky is willing to answer some questions about what he remembers from those months with the Commandos.  Steve desperately wants to know what he remembers, and Sam said that it’s okay to prod gently as long as the questions are open-ended and Bucky knows he doesn’t have to answer them. 

But Bucky surprises him by hooking his fingernail under the edge of the tape and yanking.  It parts from the cardboard after seventy years with a violent, ripping sound, and Bucky parts the cardboard flaps clumsily.  He stares into the box, delighted, and Steve can’t help the grin that spreads over his face and warms his heart. 

“This is great,” Bucky says as he lifts the intricate pocket knife out of the box.  “Did I actually use this?” 

“For food, for whittling, for scaring the daylights out of me when you tried to shave with it in France,” Steve teases.  Bucky flips the main blade open and runs the edge along his sweatpants.  Then he snaps it shut surprisingly dexterously for his right hand and sets it on the couch next to his leg. 

“What’s this?” he asks, pulling out the pocket watch next.  He taps at it, but doesn’t seem to remember how to open it. 

“Here,” Steve says, taking it gently from him.  It gives him the excuse to scoot a few inches closer to Bucky on the couch.  He runs his finger along the edge and hits the hidden lever, making the front spring open.  “It’s my dad’s watch.  I gave it to you for your birthday one year.  You were handsome enough to have one to pull out of your jacket at parties,” he says, lost in the memory for a few seconds.  He clears his throat, embarrassed, but Bucky just gapes at the watch. 

“I was?” he asks. 

“Handsome?” Steve clarifies.  When Bucky nods, he groans.  “Always fishing for compliments.  Yes, you were very handsome.  Still are,” he comments with his eyes purposefully diverted to the box.  Bucky makes a sound like a laugh caught in his throat, and then he sets the watch next to the knife. 

“Letters,” he says aloud as he plucks the stringed bundle out of the box.  Steve can see Winnie Barnes’s handwriting on the outside of one, and Bucky freezes when he sees it too. 

“My…mother?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Steve answers quietly.  “I looked up your family when I woke up.  If you ever want, I can tell you about them after you died.  It’s nothing bad, but they obviously passed away a long time ago.”

“Tell me,” Bucky asks.  His hesitancy is gone, and he seems strangely eager.  Steve blinks at him, but Bucky sets the bundle down and cups his fingers over his knee. 

“Okay.  Well, your mom outlived you by a few years.  She died in ’49.  The death certificate just said ‘illness.’  Your dad died in the late ‘50s in factory accident.  But your sister got married and had two kids, and then they had kids.  They’re still around in New York.  The family name’s Proctor now.”  Bucky looks at him, the blue ring round his pupils thin but intense. 

“Wow,” he says after a beat.  And then again, “wow.”  He picks up the letters and tries to read the return addresses without undoing the string.  When he eventually gives up and sets the letters back down, he turns to Steve and darts his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. 

“Can you not mention that again?” he asks before looking back into the box.  And it’s so reminiscent of an earlier conversation that the warm feeling in Steve’s chest chills. 

Bucky sifts through the odds and ends in the box – a Bible, some dirty pin-up pictures, several of Steve’s drawings, money from a handful of different countries, socks, an empty tin jar, and a bottle of hair pomade – before he scratches at something in the bottom of the box, struggling to pick it up.  A moment later, he pulls out a rosary. 

The confused look on his face is comical, but Steve quickly sobers.  Most of the stuff in the box is junk, but he remembers standing with his parents in the tenth pew, right side, when Bucky’d made his first communion and George Barnes had proudly dropped the rosary into his son’s open hands.  Now, Bucky doesn’t even seem to know what it is. 

“Necklace?” Bucky asks, confirming Steve’s theory and crinkling his brow at the tiny Jesus on the cross. 

“Yeah,” Steve tells him.  “Something like that.”  Bucky shrugs and drops the rosary among his spoils.  He smiles at the possessions, then starts to drop them back into the box. 

Someone knocks on Steve’s door, and he pushes himself off the couch.  He’s probably going to suggest a movie next, then bedtime.  Maybe they’ll talk about dinner and his morning with SHIELD.  But he thinks they’re done talking about the past for tonight. 

Natasha smirks at him when he opens the door.  Steve’s limiting the number of people he exposes Bucky to right out of the gate, but she’s been checking in with him as often as she could ever since they exposed Hydra, and she’s been working on discovering information about Bucky in her own way.  He’s still indebted to her for the file folder, even though he can’t make sense of what it contains. 

“Can I see him?” she asks excitedly, already side-stepping him and clicking her heels against the hardwood of his apartment floor. 

“If I said no, would it stop you?  And since when are you even in DC?” Steve asks as he shuts the door behind her.  She rounds the corner and looks past the bookshelves at the back of Bucky’s head. 

“Nice haircut,” she says to Steve in an undertone before she walks forward. 

“Hi, Steve’s friend,” her voice rings out.  There’s a catch, like her vocal cords recognize that the person in front of her speaks Russian, but she has to force herself to stick to English.  It’s probably for the best – Sam hasn’t told Steve how to handle Bucky’s new lingual abilities yet.

“Hi?” Bucky says, the question evident.  He sounds surprised, like he didn’t register the door opening and closing.  He turns around and sees Natasha. 

Whatever had been in his hand clatters to the ground, and he bolts upright.  “Natalia,” he says, looking like a deer trapped in the headlights. 

Natasha’s strut falters. 

“I didn’t tell you my name,” she accuses, and Steve steps forward unthinkingly to put himself between them.  “Did you tell him who I was?” she demands of Steve. 

“I…” Steve thinks.  Then, “No.”  He turns to Bucky. 

“How do you know her name?” he asks.  He’s perplexed, but Natasha actually seems angry. 

“I didn’t figure you actually knew the names of the people you shot,” she bites out the words.  Unconsciously, her fingers go to her abdomen and lightly rest over her scar. 

“I shot you?” Bucky practically yelps.  He works his jaw.  “No.  Natalia, I met you in the Red Room.  I would have been called the asset.  And I told you to call me Yasha.” 

 _Yasha_ , Steve mouths.  _Red Room._   They’re more pieces of the ever-widening puzzle.  He has plenty of material to add to his notes tonight.

Natasha doesn’t say anything for several minutes.  When she does speak, she sounds much smaller than Steve is used to hearing her. 

“I don’t remember much about the Red Room.  I’m sorry, but that includes you.”  Yasha sinks on to his knees atop the couch cushions, and he looks wounded by her words. 

“You don’t remember me?  We…we got in trouble together.  You were punished, and I’m so sorry.”  There’s an undercurrent of affection in his words, and it twists in Steve’s gut.  He recognizes the feeling for what it is – jealousy – because there was a time when he was so familiar with that feeling around Bucky.  Even when he’d claimed not to mind the dames and the dates and Bucky coming home smelling like perfume regularly enough to attract the neighbors’ notice, he’d always felt this twinge. 

He just wasn’t expecting to feel it here and now, after everything that’s happened.  It’s not that he thought Bucky was going to fall into his arms, or into his bed, after getting out of SHIELD…but he hadn’t expected someone else from Bucky’s past to be there either. 

“Wait,” Natasha asks.  She swallows and blinks several times.  “Are you- Did we run away together?  Got caught in a hotel…”

“In Perm,” Bucky adds.  “You remember?” 

Steve’s mind catches on ‘hotel.’ 

“No,” Natasha says bluntly.  “But I was told about it after it happened.  I couldn’t believe I’d done something so stupid.” 

Bucky settles back on his haunches and smiles.  It’s an _old_ smile, more ancient than most of the memories they share.  It’s teenage Bucky’s smile, directed at girls skipping rope and writing love notes, and occasionally, under the cover of blanket forts, at Steve. 

Steve clears his throat. 

“So when are we talking?  ‘90s?  ‘80s?”

“The Red Room operated in the ‘70s,” Natasha tells him without taking her eyes off of Bucky.  Steve has to take a moment to process that, but he’s not sure that anything about Natasha will surprise him anymore. 

“I should go.  Clint’s outside,” she says, still staring at Bucky.  When she finally forces her eyes to Steve, he raises his eyebrows. 

“Goodnight.  Congratulations on getting out,” she says to Bucky before turning on her heel and marching out the way she came.  Steve watches her close the door behind her, and then he turns back to Bucky.  The open, besotted look is still on his face, and Steve’s skin feels too tight. 

But that’s not fair.  If there’s anything that will drive Bucky away and convince him that living here with Steve is too real and too much, it’s probably possessive behavior of any sort.  And Steve doesn’t even have that claim over Bucky anymore. 

“She, uh, has someone.  The arrow necklace,” Steve mumbles.  Bucky jerks his eyes to Steve.  “But if and when you’re ready, she’s really good at matchmaking.  If you’re interested.” 

Bucky looks at him, bemused, and then he lets out another noise that’s almost a laugh.

“Right.  You and me.  Sorry, just…I thought she was dead.  It threw me to see her.”  He suddenly straightens up again.  “No, really.  I was just surprised.  I’m not interested in her.”  He sounds like he’s trying too hard to be convincing, and Steve waves a hand. 

“Doesn’t matter.  Want to put the box away and then watch a movie?” 

“Can we go see a movie?” Bucky asks, elated.  It’s like he’s already forgotten about Natasha, though Steve certainly won’t be able to. 

“We can watch one here, on the TV,” Steve answers him.  Bucky nearly runs the box back to his own room and then collapses onto the couch.  Steve puts on the last movie they saw together, _The Maltese Falcon,_ and waits for Bucky to indicate that he recognizes it. 

He doesn’t.

 

Nine days later, they’ve fallen into something like a routine with frequent appearances by Sam and Sharon.  Steve never sleeps more than four or five hours, but Bucky can sleep for almost twelve hours straight.  It’s strange, with his serum, but maybe it’s an effect of the cryofreeze.  While Bucky’s still sleeping, Steve goes for a run, takes care of errands, and sometimes stops by SHIELD to an icy reception from Director Hill. 

When Bucky wakes up in the late morning, he usually stumbles out of his room and sits on the couch until Steve makes him breakfast.  Even though Steve’s told him to help himself to anything in the fridge or cupboards, he doesn’t seem to get it, but Steve doesn’t mind making him toast and tea.  Sometimes he makes eggs.  Once he made breakfast sandwiches, and Bucky ate three. 

He never knows what mood Bucky will be in when he wakes up.  Sometimes he smiles as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and says good morning, sometimes he wraps himself in a blanket and scowls, and sometimes he averts his gaze but follows Steve around the apartment like a shadow. 

After breakfast, Steve will usually read or draw while Bucky looks up things on his tablet.  Bucky likes to listen to music most days, and Steve likes to give him recommendations for things that have been suggested to him. 

Sometimes in the evening they go on short walks or car rides.  Once they go down to a record store and, while Bucky is afraid to touch anything, he seems amazed by the concept.  Another time, they go to see some of the rubble from the Battle of Washington, and Bucky seems remarkably calm.  Twice a week, they go back to SHIELD so Bucky can meet with Dr. Ronaldo, and he’s always bitter about that. 

Bucky is the most mercurial person Steve’s ever met, much less lived with.  He wasn’t like this in the past, but now, Bucky evolves by the minute.  He’ll be red with anger and then slide into unruffled calm.  He’ll sit still as a board and then start tapping his foot.  He’ll hold a utensil perfectly competently at one meal, and then struggle at the next.  He’ll eat something and like it, but turn his nose up at it the next day. 

Everything is constantly shifting and blinking in and out.  His voice fluctuates between octaves, and sometimes a bit of an accent creeps in, but then it goes away.  He changes the way he combs his hair.  He changes the way he looks at Steve when he’s drinking his tea and contemplating him over the rim of the cup.

And Steve writes all of these changes down like a scientist observing his experiments.  He clusters them in different ways, but no matter how he arranges them, a pattern doesn’t develop. 

It’s almost like…like Bucky’s sliding around in time.  One moment, he’ll be Bucky from 1941, staring at Steve like he’ll turn into candy as soon as they can hustle off to be by themselves.  The next moment, he’ll be Bucky from 1944, hardened from the war.  Then he’ll slip into Bucky from 1935, giddy over the simplest things.  And then he’ll be Bucky from 2015, angry and ready to snap at the slightest provocation.  But also blank – so blank and devoid of curiosity or worry or enthusiasm about anything. 

That almost goes along with Steve’s memory theory – but why the message carved into his skin?  Why does he remember meeting Natasha when they wiped his memory, and they obviously wiped hers? 

 _Why_ defines his waking hours, and it also imprints on his dreams. 

He wakes up one morning from a dream of hot fevers, hotter summer days, and Bucky’s cool hands on his forehead.  He blinks sleep away, half-convinced that Bucky’s curled up beside him like he was in the dream, but reality sorts itself out soon enough. 

Yawning, he pushes sleep away and climbs out of bed, padding into the bathroom and then to the kitchen.  His route naturally takes him by Bucky’s room, and he takes the ajar door as permission to peek inside and make sure Bucky’s okay. 

The door thing is another anomaly.  Steve remembers how angry Bucky had been when he’d let himself into the bathroom to check on him, but nothing else like that has happened.  If anything, Bucky doesn’t really seem to understand the concept of privacy.  He leaves the door open when he sleeps and uses the bathroom, and he doesn’t react either time that Steve walks in on him changing. 

Sam says it might be because he doesn’t feel like he has control over his space.  Natasha says it might be because he forgot what it was like to _not_ be watched. 

Natasha’s explanation makes him more nauseous, so he assumes she’s closer to the truth. 

Bucky’s sleeping silently and inanimately, his chest still, and Steve feels the same fear that’s crept over him the past eight mornings.  Rationally, he knows that Bucky is breathing, but he feels frozen in the doorframe until Bucky twitches or makes a noise indicating that he’s not a corpse. 

Usually it only takes a few minutes, but today, nothing happens.  Nervously, Steve shuffles forward a few feet and strains his ears.  Nothing. 

He shuffles forward a few more feet until his thighs are touching the bed, and he leans over, eyes searching Bucky’s face before he tentatively holds out a hand in front of Bucky’s nose. 

He feels a soft puff of warm air.  Relaxing, he keeps his hand hovering over Bucky’s face for longer than he needs to, but he doesn’t think he misses any visual cues that Bucky is awake. 

The next second, though, Bucky swings his sheet-tangled leg and knees Steve in the groin.  Steve grunts as Bucky gets his knees under him, pushes Steve to the ground, and jumps on top of him. 

“What are you doing?” Bucky growls.  Steve’s still wincing from the hit, and Bucky’s straddling him, pinning both of his hands above his head with one arm and putting pressure on the site of impact. 

“Just making sure you’re okay,” Steve groans.  Bucky hadn’t held back, and Steve hadn’t been prepared at all for the attack.  He wants to curl into a ball, but Bucky’s preventing that from happening. 

“Don’t touch my body when I’m asleep,” Bucky hisses.  He leans closer and bares his teeth, but Steve’s wires are tangled, and he focuses on Bucky’s lips instead of the clear threat. 

Then Bucky’s climbing off him and grabbing the grey hoodie that he wears roughly every other day.  He yanks it over his head and covers his bare chest and empty, scarred shoulder before storming out without a second look. 

Steve heaves himself to his feet, cupping his groin, and hobbles to the kitchen.  He probably should have just stuck to the kitchen plan from the beginning. 

He makes coffee and cuts up fruit for a fruit salad while Bucky sits on the couch and stares out the windows, ignoring him.  He’s wearing his hood up, which is another thing that he seems to love one day and forget about the next. 

“Do you want fruit salad for breakfast or something else?” Steve asks, attempting to make a peace offering.  Bucky doesn’t answer, and Steve eventually sighs, setting a bowl in front of him on the coffee table. 

This isn’t an auspicious start to their first day apart since Bucky was released.  Actually, he wasn’t counting on Bucky being awake so early, but now that he is, they at least get to spend the morning together before Steve heads over to Rebuild Washington and Sam comes to hang out with Bucky for a few hours.

Sam and Ronaldo are in agreement that Steve needs to give Bucky enough time away from him.  To some extent, Steve is Bucky’s jailer as much as the ankle monitor is, and Bucky needs to spend some time without Steve breathing down his neck, worrying and assessing in equal amounts. 

That doesn’t means he likes it. 

He sits down on the couch with an entire cushion’s length between himself and Bucky, even though they’d sat here yesterday and Bucky had scooted closer and closer to see Steve’s sketchbook until his chin had practically been hooked over Steve’s shoulder.  Whatever this new mood of Bucky’s is, Steve doesn’t want to get too close, lest the events of the morning repeat themselves. 

“Want to watch the news?” he asks as he takes a sip of his coffee.  Bucky eyes the mug.  “Want me to make you tea?” 

“Don’t like tea.  What’s that?” Bucky speaks for the first time since the incident in his room.  Steve raises his eyebrows, because Bucky’s never told him that he doesn’t like tea before.  Steve makes it for him every morning because Bucky hates coffee, but now, he feels like a shitty friend yet again. 

“Coffee?  You hated it, but it does taste a little different than it used to.  Well, I just use instant coffee, but you can get these cups, or you can buy coffee at restaurants that tastes like a hot milkshake instead of coffee.”

As he’s speaking, Bucky pulls the mug out of his hands and takes a swig. 

“I want this,” he says.  Steve opens his mouth to offer to make him a cup, but then Bucky takes another swig, and Steve realizes that he’s not getting it back.  He gets up to replace it as Bucky sips at the mug and makes a sound that, with his bad mood filtered out, is probably a noise of pleasure. 

Steve puts the news on when he gets back, watching reporters’ accounts of Rebuild Washington, President Ellis’s remarks on Ukraine, and a few fluff pieces about children and animals.  Steve chuckles at a video of a large cat trying to squeeze through a small doggy door, and Bucky eventually steals Steve’s second cup of coffee too. 

Steve gives up on caffeinating.  At least Bucky’s showing more willingness to get himself food, instead of sitting and waiting long past the point where he must be starving. 

“I’m going to shower,” Steve says after the news ends and Sesame Street begins.  Bucky glares at the characters on the screen, and Steve hands him the remote even though he doubts Bucky will change it.  He seems willing enough to use his StarkTablet, but he skirts around the other technology in the apartment like it doesn’t occur to him that changing the channel, or using the microwave, or even buzzing Sam in is an option. 

Steve’s covered in suds under the spray of the shower when he hears the door fly open and ricochet against the countertop.  Bucky pounds on the glass door of the shower, likely nearly shattering it, as Steve gapes at his murky outline through the glass. 

“What’s in coffee?” Bucky snarls. 

“Milk.  Little bit of sugar.  Coffee beans- oh, caffeine.  I should have reminded you about that.” 

“You drugged me?” Bucky demands.  He yanks the shower door back, jarring it from its track, and glares at Steve in a reversal of their positions from his first day in the apartment. 

“You drugged yourself,” Steve argues.  He puts his hands up, feeling very vulnerable in his naked and slippery state.  “I didn’t know I had to remind you that coffee makes you jittery.” 

“When will it go away?” Bucky growls.  Looking closer, Steve can see that he’s twitching visibly, and he wonders how much of this is coffee shocking the system after seventy years of abstinence, and how much of this is Bucky’s foul mood. 

“A couple hours.  Sorry, I didn’t think.  You’ve been drinking green tea…” he trails off as Bucky leaves the bathroom, the shower door and the bathroom door hanging open behind him.  Heart still thumping, Steve pulls them both shut as best as he can and finishes rinsing off, Bucky’s words _You drugged me?_ looping through his head.  It had been as much of an accusation as it had been a question, and Steve feels sick again. 

He gets dressed and goes out to the living room to find some way to apologize, but Bucky’s raptly watching Sesame Street. 

“Hi,” he greets Steve pleasantly enough when he turns his head in Steve’s direction. 

His hood is down around his shoulders.  He half-smiles at something Ernie says. 

Steve wonders if he’s going crazy. 

Then his brain readjusts the perspective, and he wonders if _Bucky_ is the one who’s gone crazy.  Can all of these symptoms from his shifting moods to his docility with Hydra be attributed to something as simple as…insanity? 

But that isn’t right.  Bucky’s far too lucid to be compared to crazy Nester Fallon, the troubled neighbor of Steve’s youth who’d been carted away to a looney bin in front of his children when Steve was twelve.  He and Bucky had watched it from Bucky’s balcony, and the man had been spitting and clawing at his own arms, getting blood on the orderlies and screaming up a racket about being Satan’s darling boy.  Bucky is in no way that man. 

And even if his understanding of insanity is off, as all of his medical knowledge is in this century, Ronaldo certainly knows her stuff.  She’d have caught it if Bucky needed to be in an asylum instead of on Steve’s couch, vibrating from caffeine and enraptured by children’s television. 

“How are they doing that?” Bucky asks, pointing to the screen. 

“They’re puppets,” Steve tries to swallow back all of the emotions of the past ten minutes.  From Bucky barging in on him to his short-lived realization, he feels like he’s already exhausted from today, and it’s barely begun.  “We saw some puppets at a fair.”

“That’s a puppet?” Bucky crinkles his eyebrow.  “Someone’s called me that before.  But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Who called you a puppet?” Steve asks, furious and defeated all in the same breath.  Bucky opens his mouth to reply, then snaps it shut. 

“Some guy in Hydra,” he says eventually.  He’s not lying very well. 

Steve sighs and goes to make a note about it. 

 

He comes back from volunteering at the Potomac site as frantically eager as a parent with a new baby, but the sight that greets him inside his apartment is surprising. 

“Hey man,” Sam calls out, holding up a beer in greeting.  Steve raises and eyebrow when he sees that Bucky has a beer too, but there’s nothing in Ronaldo’s instructions that says he can’t drink alcohol.  After this morning, though, Steve’s hesitant. 

“We have had an awesome time without you,” Sam brags.  “Barnes here got tired of PBS pretty early on, but I graciously offered to take him on a tour of my other childhood programing.”  Steve looks up at the screen to see…he doesn’t have any words for what he’s seeing.  He may be much more accustomed to 21st century media than Bucky is, but he still can’t believe some of the things his friends show him. 

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Sam crows.  “1990, baby.  None of that CGI shit.”

“They’re turtles?” Steve squints at the TV.  “They don’t look like turtles.”

“Turtles who fight crime.  Not unlike the people in this room,” Sam contributes. 

“They’re brothers,” Bucky says.  “Four of them.”  He’s actually grinning as he says it, not half-smiling or trying to twist his mouth because he thinks he’s supposed to, but really grinning. 

If it puts that look on Bucky’s face, Sam can show him anything he wants.  In all honesty, it looks like Bucky’s morning with Sam was good for him, and Steve swallows back the envy in his throat.  He sits down between them and surveys the plates of sandwich crusts on his coffee table. 

“PB and J for lunch?” he asks.  He notices that Sam’s plate only has a crust and a few crumbs, but Bucky’s plate is smeared with peanut butter and red jam like the sandwich-maker was out of practice. 

“We made our own sandwiches,” Sam tells him with a glowing note in his voice.  Steve whips his head around to look at Bucky, who flushes under the attention. 

He wants to praise Bucky for having the agency to put his own lunch together, but he isn’t supposed to make it seem like Bucky’s done anything out of the ordinary.  He nods, and turns back to the bizarre creatures on the screen.  Apart from their shells, they in no way resemble turtles. 

Then his eyes catch on the plate again, and he frowns. 

If Bucky made his own sandwich, why did he put jelly on it?  Bucky hates jelly, like he hates most sweet things that aren’t explicitly candy. 

The sheer weight of the things that Steve doesn’t understand threatens to crush him into the sofa. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The run-down:
> 
> Arriving at the apartment - Bucky  
> Dinner/Natasha - Yasha  
> Wake-up call - asset  
> Day with Sam - Yasha


	4. Avenger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter spoils the ending to the movie Casablanca. Seeing how it came out in 1942, I'm going to assume that everyone who intended to see it has already done so. 
> 
> Also, your amazing feedback made me cry, so thank you.

They’re well into the warmer edge of spring when Ronaldo and her team concede that they can’t find any latent triggers in Bucky’s mind.  She and Steve both have mixed emotions about this; it’s good that Steve can feel fairly confident he won’t unwittingly trigger Bucky in the middle of a trip to Safeway for groceries, but he _needs_ to have something concrete he can point to and say, ‘that’s why.’ 

Without that certainty, he feels ungrounded.  For every moment when the old Bucky shines through with some acerbic comment about the Los Angeles Dodgers or an admonishment to Steve to stop reading in the dark, there’s a moment when Bucky’s flickering between extremes, and Steve has to close the door to his bedroom and sit on his bed, head between his knees, just to ward off the panic attack that feels like it’s constantly in the back of his lungs. 

His questions consume both his sleep and his waking hours, and he’s no closer to figuring out what’s going on with Bucky.  He thinks maybe he never will be, and he wonders if it’s good for Bucky to live with him when he’s turning into a powder keg. 

But Ronaldo, at least, seems to think it’s good news.  She puts in the request to change Bucky’s status from House Arrest to Probationary, and Steve’s sitting with him in Ronaldo’s office when she confirms that, yes, that means the hated ankle monitor can come off. 

“Let me go get someone who can remove it,” she says with a smile.  Bucky looks at his hands until she leaves, and then he turns to Steve. 

“Give me your keys,” he orders in a low voice.  Steve’s learned to pick his battles by now, so he hands his keys over wordlessly, staring at the impressive collection of diplomas behind Ronaldo’s desk.  He hears the clicking of metal next to him, but he doesn’t check on Bucky. 

A minute later, Bucky places the sleek blue-and-silver contraption on the edge of Ronaldo’s desk, and Steve turns to see Bucky’s bare ankle, slightly paler than the rest of him, as Bucky tosses the keys back into his lap.  He grins at Steve, like he expects Steve to be impressed with his patience in _not_ picking the lock on the ankle monitor for nearly two months. 

Steve weakly returns his smile.  He is sort of impressed, but if Bucky could handle two months of being monitored and confined to Steve’s schedule, he could have handled ten more minutes.  He just picked the lock to be stubborn – and that itches against Steve’s brain because he swears Bucky wasn’t in a stubborn mood when they sat down in Ronaldo’s office. 

She comes back in with an agent carrying an elaborate device larger than the ankle monitor itself, and Bucky stretches innocently, putting his ankle in full view of his visitors. 

“For God’s sake, boys,” Ronaldo accuses them both.  Somehow, Steve is in trouble too.  “At least give us the illusion of being able to contain you.” 

“How did that come off?” the agent says slowly, looking between Bucky’s ankle and the monitor on the desk. 

“Shoddy workmanship,” Bucky claims.  Steve shrugs, and Bucky beams at him when Steve doesn’t tattle.  His heart lightens just enough to stop the litany of _why why why_ marching through his head. 

Steve drives them back to his apartment in the 1992 pick-up truck he acquired after realizing he couldn’t realistically transport himself and Bucky very well on his motorcycle.  Bucky trails his fingertips outside the cab window, playing with the air and his arm’s resistance to it as Steve takes the 295 on-ramp.

He flips the radio on because Bucky still has a habit of deferring to him to manipulate their environment.  He’ll mess with the television or the record player or once, disastrously, the washing machine when he’s by himself, but around other people, he fades back a little and doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. 

“Pick a station,” Steve suggests automatically, and Bucky pulls his arm back inside the truck to spin the dial.  His music tastes fluctuate as much as his food tastes did at the beginning of his house arrest (he’s settled on liking coffee but not liking jelly) and today he picks gospel music. 

It’s better than the death metal station he found and bookmarked on Pandora. 

When they get home, Steve half-expects Bucky to go out for a run or a nondescript errand just to test his new freedom from Steve, but he sits on the balcony and lights a cigarette, tapping it against the bannister and letting the ash trickle to the stone courtyard below. 

Sam and Sharon are still shocked that Bucky and, occasionally, Steve smoke, but it’s not like it can do any damage to their serum-infused lungs.  Steve still hasn’t gotten over how ignorant they’d been about the side effects in his youth, and how many people had paid the price for it.  But Bucky likes it, and Steve likes sitting with Bucky on the balcony while he tries to blow smoke rings (sometimes he can, and sometimes he’s way off).  With the smell of smokes, the sounds of the city, and Bucky’s warmth next to him, he can close his eyes and feel the farthest away from homesickness he gets in this century. 

“What now?” he asks several minutes after he joins Bucky.  They recline indolently on Steve’s patio furniture, and Bucky has his feet up on the railing. 

“Dinner?” Bucky asks. 

“No, what now that you have the ankle monitor off?  And you can leave whenever you want to, without me,” Steve tries to ask levelly.  He’s not in denial about what happened in Ronaldo’s office; he knows that the ankle monitor was never really stopping Bucky.  But it feels like something’s changed between them.  In the eyes of SHIELD at least, Steve isn’t responsible for Bucky anymore, though he probably will always feel like he is. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky shrugs.  He blows out a perfect smoke circle, and Steve feels like that’s important, somehow.  “Am I supposed to do something else now?  I thought the shrink just said report by phone once a week.” 

“I mean, you don’t have to stay here.  I want you to,” he says with complete certainty, “but you aren’t obligated.”  Bucky snorts.

“I was living in a factory without running water before this,” he says depreciatingly.  “I’m not stupid.” 

“Good.  So stay.  But…” Steve trails off.  Bucky uncrosses and re-crosses his ankles.  “What do you want to do?  You can’t make your entire life out of sleeping, watching TV, and running around the Mall.” 

“You do,” Bucky accuses.  Then his eyes widen in realization.  “…because of me.  Fuck.”

“It’s been nice to hole up with you,” Steve rushes to assure him.  “But if you’re going to be around permanently, I think we need to stop treating it like it’s temporary.” 

Bucky touches the cigarette butt against the pale, moist skin recently freed from the ankle monitor, and Steve gags as he catches the scent of burning flesh.  Bucky pulls the butt away before Steve can say anything, and he stares in fascination at the welt.  He doesn’t flinch, and that’s what Steve finds most alarming. 

“Can you please not do that?” he asks, a little choked up. 

“My whole shoulder was like this when they took the arm out.  Clammy.  Suffocated,” Bucky says. 

He’s avoiding the issue. 

“You don’t have to decide now.  Just think about it.  Eventually, you’ll get tired of looking at the same walls day in and day out.  And the same person,” Steve tries to joke. 

“No,” Bucky says flatly.  Steve can’t tell if he’s referring to the walls or to Steve or to both. 

“We’ll find something that you like.  It can be a little thing,” Steve promises.  Bucky stares at the building across the street. 

Steve doesn’t want to push Bucky, but Sam, Ronaldo, and even Tony are convinced that Bucky needs a purpose beyond shadowing Steve and watching every World War II movie and documentary he can track down.  They’re not wrong, but all he can think of when they get on his case is when Sam asked a similar question of him a year ago – what makes you happy? 

Steve’s tried to learn the answer to that question several times, but it doesn’t seem like much makes Bucky happy.  Certainly nothing that would get him out of the apartment. 

Compared to when he got out of the SHIELD facility, Bucky voluntarily communicates more and gets overwhelmed by choices and stimuli less frequently.  But he still has a veneer of blankness to him, a thin veil of preferences that’s always undercut by the fact that he doesn’t care about what he eats or wears or does outside of the physical moment when it’s happening. 

Bucky feels empty and leaden at the same time, and Steve doesn’t know if he’s helping, hindering, or just watching Bucky stagnate. 

He follows Bucky’s eye line across the street to the building where he watched over Steve, and something brushes against his mind.  Maybe he does know something that makes Bucky relatively happy.  The question is, is it going to push him forward or pull him even further under?

 

Steve wakes up several days later with the distinct impression that he’s being watched.  He blinks his eyelids open and sees a sliver of harsh sunlight cutting across his eggshell wall and blurring the bumps and grooves of the paint into a smooth, yellow line. 

There’s nothing on this side of the bed, so he twists his torso and cranes his neck to look behind him, still blinking.  He sees Bucky’s face at eye level, and he automatically rolls his body closer to him, tangling himself in the sheets and pulling them along with him as he rolls to the other side of the bed.  It’s the side he doesn’t sleep on, because the left side was always Bucky’s, even in twin-sized beds in Brooklyn and cots across Europe. 

Bucky is sitting on the floor next to Steve’s bed with his legs folded in front of him.  He looks uncomfortable, but not embarrassed, to have been caught, and he doesn’t try to move as Steve brings himself a few inches away from Bucky’s face. 

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks.  He hears the gravel in his voice, but he has to know immediately.  Bucky doesn’t come into his space like this anymore, so something’s going on. 

“Nothing.  Just making sure,” Bucky cuts himself off before he can finish the sentence. 

“I’m alive,” Steve promises quietly.  Bucky grimaces.   

“Obviously,” he huffs, and his tone is so familiar that Steve expects to see him roll his eyes.  When he doesn’t go through with the expected gesture, Steve’s chest feels a little emptier, and he reaches out and grabs Bucky’s arm on impulse.  He lifts it and slides his grip down to Bucky’s hand, which he pulls against his own neck.  He presses until he thinks that Bucky can feel Steve’s pulse resonating through his palm.

Bucky meets his eyes and they silently stare at each other, Bucky’s hand trapped loosely between Steve’s neck and Steve’s own hand, and Bucky bites his lip probably harder than the situation warrants. 

“Thanks,” he says finally.  Then, “how’d you know?” 

How did Steve know that Bucky needed reassurance that an unkillable man hadn’t died in the middle of the night? 

Because they both need that reassurance sometimes.  Bucky has to know that.  He caught Steve looming over him and checking for breath months ago.  Steve caught him sneaking into his apartment and watching the rise and fall of his chest before he turned himself in. 

After Zola, Steve would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and need to get his fingers on Bucky’s wrist, or his neck, or any pulse point. 

Before the war, Bucky couldn’t sleep more than a few hours without putting his hand against Steve’s forehead and making sure fever wasn’t brewing under Steve’s skin. 

“Remember a few months ago when I accidentally woke you up because I was checking your breathing?” Steve goes for the most recent example of their mutual dependency on each other’s vital stats.  Bucky gently shakes his head, and Steve laughs. 

“How do you not remember that?  You kneed me in my junk.  That was the morning you freaked out about the coffee,” Steve adds for the context.  He isn’t upset about it, but Bucky flushes. 

“Forgot.  Sorry,” he apologizes, and now he does sound embarrassed. 

Steve pushes Bucky’s hand against his neck with even more firmness.  He can feel the callouses on Bucky’s palm and fingers against his skin, and when he swallows down the saliva pooling in his mouth, he feels Bucky’s hand flex against his Adam’s apple. 

Bucky stays a few more minutes, and they don’t say anything else.  They stare at each other, unblinking for so long that Steve’s eyes start to water, and he crushes Bucky’s hand against his throat to the point where a normal person would bruise. 

Then Bucky blinks, pulls his hand back with the aggression that’s always lurking under his skin, and disappears into the bathroom.  A minute later, Steve hears the shower start up. 

Steve fights with the top sheet and manages to unwind it from his legs where he twisted it like a vice when he rolled over to Bucky.  He gets out of bed on shaky legs, reaching into his tented boxer shorts to adjust himself and pull his cock up flush between his stomach and the waistband of his boxers.  At least it isn’t obvious now. 

Between his usual morning wood and Bucky’s warm hand against his neck, his blood is stirring.  He looks longingly at the bathroom door, wishing for once that his apartment had more than one shower, but he knows that Bucky’s going to be a while.  Sam likes to make cracks about Steve’s water bill, which isn’t an issue, but it’s true that Bucky thinks thirty minutes is a “quick” shower.  Steve doesn’t want to make him think there’s anything wrong with that when Bucky clearly likes long showers, though. 

Which means that, when he gets the shower, most of the hot water will be gone.  The good Catholic boy inside him knows that he should just wait and let the cold water take care of his problem, but.

But Bucky was practically in his bed this morning.  He was inches away, close enough for Steve to smell the sourness of his breath and feel the crescents of his fingernails still dimpling his neck. 

He falls back into bed, feeling incredibly guilty.  It feels like he’s taking advantage of Bucky in some way, using the idea of him and memories of him when he’s nowhere near ready to really touch Steve and share this with him.  Maybe he’ll never be ready.  Maybe he’ll be ready but not want to with Steve. 

Steve feels guilty for thinking about Bucky like this, purely for his own pleasure, when the real Bucky is only yards away in the shower.  Naked with hot water sluicing over his back, or his stomach, probably with his eyes closed and water droplets hanging on his eyelashes. 

Steve groans as the image makes him pulse, and he pulls the sheet up to his reddening checks, finally reaching into his boxers and getting his fingers around his cock.  He’s touching himself with his right hand – the same hand that had touched Bucky’s.

From there, it’s rote.  With the exception of the few years he and Bucky shared an apartment, and the smallest touch to his cock would summon Bucky like a homing beacon, he’s almost always had to do this quietly.  He’s always had to stuff the corner of the sheet into his mouth, squeezing his eyes tightly shut and jerking one hand tightly up and down his cock while the other hand smoothes over his balls and circles his hole, because there have always been parents or soldiers nearby, and the trick is to be silent until he comes because he knows he’s always going to make a racket then. 

After he woke up, but before Bucky came to stay with him, he’d had the freedom to make as much noise as he wanted, but zero inclination.  Lots of things turn him on in a fleeting, temporal sort of way – the sweat collecting on Sam’s lower back when they run, the way Sharon’s legs look in stilettos and a gun holster, and the way Clint’s arms look when they’re holding tension on his bow.  But those images run their course and don’t do anything for him later when he tries to pull them up.  It’s the same with 21st century pornography, what little he’s been exposed to (mostly by Tony).

Nothing gets under his skin and settles there like a low buzz the way that Bucky does.  Living with Bucky, breathing him in and occasionally getting to touch him, sets him off all too frequently.  He doesn’t want it to, and he usually ignores the itch by thinking about what Hydra did to Bucky until his erection flags, but some days…

He grunts into the sheet, pulling his feet against his ass so he can tilt his hips more.  Twisting his fingers around the head of his cock, he fists his hand tighter and faster up and down the shaft.  He wipes a glob of precum away with his right index finger and uses it to press against his sphincter, not penetrating but teasing the possibility. 

His balls tighten and his legs try to clench together against the feeling welling up in his nervous system.  He fights it, feeling the sheet corner against his tongue and the hot friction of his hand against his penis, almost too much, almost too hot. 

 Bucky moves suddenly in the shower, making the water slap against the tile instead of hitting a body first, and Steve can’t stop trying to visualize it in his mind.  He images Bucky doing the same thing he’s doing, pushing his cock through the tight channel of his fingers and biting down the moans that almost escape his throat. 

Then he sees another Bucky in his mind, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a dirty smile, grinning at him from the rickety kitchen chair while he fisted his cock and jerked his hips up in to his hands. 

‘This’ll make it last longer, Stevie,’ he’d promised while Steve stared wide-eyed and felt irrationally jealous of Bucky himself.  He’d gotten to his feet unsteadily and crossed the one-room apartment to stand in front of Bucky. 

‘Nah, I told you, you never listen,’ Bucky had complained.  ‘If I get off once, it will make the second time – holy hell.  Are you sure about…holy fuckin’ hell.’ 

Steve comes in the present day with the memory of Bucky’s cock trembling on his tongue for the first time, Bucky an awed, frantic mess in the chair above him.  He hears his own shout distantly, like it didn’t come from his own vocal cords, and he pulls the sheet corner out of his mouth along with the phantom taste of Bucky’s spunk. 

Quickly, he wipes himself off with the slobbery sheet and strips the bed.  It’s probably time for him to wash his sheets anyway, he decides, as he throws the light gray sheets into his laundry basket with a few other gray items of laundry and heads for the machine off of his living room. 

His pulse is back to normal when Bucky walks out of the shower, a towel around his waist and another draped over his shoulders and catching the droplets of water from his shaggy hair. 

“You okay?  Thought I heard you yell or something.”  Steve calmly picks up his bagel with cream cheese and shrugs. 

“Stubbed my toe.  There’s coffee in the pot.”  Bucky grimaces and goes back to his room to get dressed.  Finally, the shower is free, and Steve’s grateful for the lukewarm temperature as he steps under the spray.  He pushes the dial and makes it even colder, washing away the imagined evidence of Bucky from his body along with the very real evidence of his impatience. 

Cold water always sobers Steve especially because it reminds him of crashing into the icy water.  He doesn’t have memories of what happened after that – he hit his head on the console when he broke the surface of the water, and the only thing he remembers are the tendrils of freezing water leaking through the cracks in the windshield glass.  They were cold enough to burn into his memory, but he doesn’t have flashbacks of his body shutting down and succumbing to the ice, because he simply doesn’t remember that.

He does remember all of the colliding emotions in his chest when he tilted the plane downwards.  He remembers Peggy protesting in his ear, and Bucky protesting in his mind, but he’d told himself to ignore them both.  He _had_ to put the plane in the water – it wasn’t turning or slowing, and the eastern seaboard was looming closer and closer.  Maybe there were other options, but not enough time to figure them out. 

And part of him – the part that no one can ever know about, especially not Bucky – had been relieved that there were no other options.  That he wouldn’t have to keep figuring out ways to get up in the morning and fight for a world that no longer included Bucky, and for the possibility of going home to a city that had nothing for him. 

If there’d been a choice, he probably would have taken the road that kept him alive, even though he’d be miserable.  He wouldn’t have wanted to hurt more people, Peggy included.

But there hadn’t been a choice. 

And as it turns out, Bucky hadn’t been dead anyway.  Somehow, they were both pulled in to the future with pieces and parts missing, and Steve finally feels like he can smile without forcing it. 

What makes him happy, Sam had wanted to know.  Bucky makes him happy. 

But Bucky also frustrates him and confuses him and worries the absolute hell out of him.  Bucky’s mercurial temperament aside, he’s constantly on edge waiting for Bucky to leave.  Being around each other again isn’t an equivalent balm to Bucky, and Steve wonders constantly why he’s even sticking around when they’re treading water like this, stuck in time, unable to have the feelings of their past or the freedom of the future. 

Except Bucky doesn’t leave.  He doesn’t seem to mind being stuck, and that eats away at Steve’s stomach like acid.  He seems perfectly content to be dependent on Steve, and it’s like he has two defaults – completely autonomous on a rooftop, or completely reliant on Steve.  On Steve, who can’t control his urges or stop himself from masturbating to the idea of a very broken, very empty man. 

Steve shuts off the shower and stands on the tiles, dripping. 

He has to break this holding pattern. 

 

* * *

 

Bucky and Yasha are playing a game where they describe something they saw topside and make the other one guess what it is.  It’s a game that suddenly expanded when they got away from Hydra and started seeing things beyond their collection of cells, but they’ve worn it pretty thin over the past months. 

Most of their time is spent in Steve’s apartment, and there’s only so many times they can describe the knickknacks on his bookshelves before it gets old. 

Yasha completely gives the game away when he describes the gurgling noise that the item makes, and the asset guesses that it’s the coffeemaker. 

“You’re not playing,” Yasha complains. 

“Are you playing?  Because it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it,” the asset counters. 

Bucky lets them bicker it out.  If he were Axel, he’d already have stepped in as the peacekeeper, but he doesn’t really mind.  No one argues around him topside – Steve must have differences of opinion with Sam and Ronaldo, but he treats Bucky with kid gloves and doesn’t do his arguing in Bucky’s presence. 

It makes Bucky laugh how frail Steve seems to think he is.  There is nothing ugly or violent enough on the topside world to match what’s in Bucky’s mind and soul, but Steve thinks he can’t handle people talking about him in his presence or looking at the mangled bump where his arm used to be. 

Axel disagrees with him, and that’s been a point of contention between them lately.  Axel doesn’t think that Steve is patronizing Bucky; he thinks Steve is waiting for Bucky to signal that he wants Steve to stop tip-toeing around him.  Axel wants Bucky to stop putting so much distance between him and Steve.  Axel wants Bucky to speak up and just ask Steve what Sharon means to him, and if Bucky still means to him what he did all those decades ago. 

Axel wants things that he knows nothing about. 

But at least when Bucky and Axel argue, it’s level-headed and with the best of intentions.  Yasha and the asset are already flinging Russian swear words at each other, calling each other fuckheads and train station whores, words mostly gleaned from their guards in Department X.  It’s amusing up to a point, and then it gets tedious. 

Bucky drifts to the top sometime later, and his body is strapped into the passenger seat in Steve’s truck.  He cracks his back and listens to the modern pop music flowing from the speakers.  It’s amazing how fascinated musicians still are with love and all its permutations – loving someone you can’t have; loving someone and not understanding how you’re lucky enough to have them; and loving someone you lost.  The background music is made by computers now, but the sentiment is the same. 

He looks down and his hands and sees that he’s holding up two fingers.  So Axel is trying to call himself back out, but he’s giving the others a chance to look around.  Bucky looks properly for the first time and notices that he doesn’t recognize the surrounding highway or trees. 

Which doesn’t say much.  But maybe they’re going somewhere new. 

He’s positive that Steve and Axel have already discussed where they’re going, so he doesn’t ask again.  They’ve made too many mistakes with Steve – repeating conversations, fucking up the foods they don’t like, and failing to agree about their reactions ahead of time.  Sometimes they’re unavoidable, like with Natalia, but sometimes they just have to coordinate. 

Like now.  So they’re going somewhere new.  Bucky takes that knowledge and sinks under, hoping that Axel’s had enough time to brief the others. 

“We’re going to New York,” Yasha tells him.  He looks excited, like his fascination with New York is still intact now that the best part, Steve, lives elsewhere. 

But going to New York _with_ Steve sounds interesting.  Suddenly Bucky’s throat closes up and his eyes itch, even though these things are impossible in here. They can’t physically feel things inside their head, although Bucky did once, and it led to him almost going deep.

The asset seems to recognize this, and while Yasha talks happily about how he wants to see what modern-day New York looks like, the asset crouches in front of Bucky. 

“One time, I had a mission in Sydney.  Kill the politician and his mistress.  But I underestimated her and she came at me with a shotgun.”  Bucky listens, rapt, to the gruesome story.  It does, in fact, focus him.  He stops thinking about walking the streets of Brooklyn with Steve, talking about what’s changed and what’s stayed the same, and just lets himself drift with the asset’s harsh words washing over him. 

Ah, yes.  This is what he does.  He causes chaos and pain, and he’s used to it.  Don’t get distracted by the temporary good in life, when it’s in your nature to destroy and deform. 

“Thanks,” he says when he feels normal again.  Yasha looks confusedly between the two of them, and Bucky turns to him. 

“Are we going to Brooklyn?  Or are we going to Manhattan?  Steve has an apartment there, right, at Tony Stark’s tower?” 

“Axel didn’t know,” Yasha tells him.  “He said Steve wanted to go on a ‘road trip.’  Told him to pack for a few days.” 

Bucky’s thoughts race about what Steve could be doing.  Bucky knows that Steve’s on the Avengers team, and he knows that Steve’s been on the auxiliary list for months because he thinks Bucky’s too pathetic to be left alone for long periods of time.  Luckily, nothing on the scale of the alien invasion has happened in the interim.

So maybe he’s been called up.  Maybe there’s a mission, but he doesn’t want to leave Bucky by himself for several days.  Maybe that means Sam’s been called up, too. 

Or maybe he misses the Avengers.  From what Steve says and the pictures scattered around the apartment, Bucky gathers that Steve and his new team are close.  Maybe this is a social call, and Bucky can hide himself away in Steve’s New York apartment while Steve shoots the breeze with his friends. 

He vacillates between which idea he prefers – if Steve is going to fight with the Avengers, then there’s a chance he’ll be hurt, and Bucky cringes away from the thought.  But if Steve misses his friends, then that signals that he’s tiring of Bucky, and it might be time to leave soon.      

He doesn’t really want to leave Steve.  The horse factory was very drafty.  Or maybe he’ll have to leave from New York.

Maybe he can go to Brooklyn.  The bridge is probably still there.  They haven’t revisited the issue of killing their body in a while, but maybe the others would agree to give it a go.  It would probably take a lot of effort, though.  They’d have to hold the body down there much longer than a normal human would take. 

Maybe they could tether the body to something underneath the water? 

He catches himself following this train of thought to its conclusion.  Meanwhile, Yasha wants to know if he thinks they still have dance clubs in New York. 

He realizes that the others probably wouldn’t agree to jump off the bridge.  Yasha and the asset are better at looking to the future and thinking about the possibilities now that SHIELD really doesn’t seem interested in being their master, while Bucky and Axel are more skeptical and stuck in the past. 

The others probably would carry his body forward and find new purpose for it.  It might be a stupid purpose, but he thinks they could do it. 

So maybe, when they leave, he’ll just go deep finally and let them sort out what the fuck they want to do next. 

It’s a freeing thought. 

 

Bucky wakes up underground.  He can see concrete walls and giant support pillars, and he flinches and draws his limbs up to protect himself. 

Steve puts a hand on his shoulder.  Bucky identifies him by the smell of his aftershave, which hadn’t penetrated the first few waking seconds.  Now, though, he feels ridiculous.

“Just a parking garage.  We drove in here a minute ago – you ready to leave?” Steve asks, like he doesn’t mind explaining mundane details about the present while Bucky gnashes beside him like a scared dog. 

“Yes,” Bucky answers woodenly, clicking his seatbelt open and stepping out of the truck.  Steve hands him his duffel from the bed and slings his own bag over his arm. 

They climb into a fancy elevator, and Bucky can’t help but feeling like he isn’t supposed to be here.  Elevators were always what brought the agents and scientists to him, then whisked them away.  He’s not supposed to be near the elevators, and even though he logically knows that was a long time ago, his skin still crawls like he’s about to be caught. 

Steve whistles, oblivious, and a voice from the elevator’s ceiling talks to him. 

“Greetings, Captain Rogers and friend,” the voice says.  Bucky vaguely dislikes it, but he doesn’t try to investigate its source. 

“This is Sergeant Barnes.  How are you, JARVIS?” Steve talks to the voice.

“We are all very pleased to see you, Captain and Sergeant.”

“Just Barnes,” Bucky growls at the ceiling.  He has no idea where the man behind the voice really is, but the speaker is up there, and it’s close enough. 

Steve blinks at him.

“No Sergeant?” he finally asks as they rise through the levels of the building more rapidly than Bucky’s stomach really appreciates.  He opens his mouth to answer Steve, but he doesn’t know how to explain that he’s a disgrace to the uniform and that he forfeited his rank a long time ago. 

“You know,” Steve says after giving Bucky an assessing look.  “Technically, neither of us were put on the KIA list until a few years ago.  We were MIA until then.  Which means, with regular promotions, we should probably be generals by now.”  He looks like he expects Bucky to at least crack a smile, but the idea of being promoted and lauded while his body was being bloodied in a Russian basement makes Bucky cringe. 

Steve drops it, and the door slides open.  JARVIS has, apparently, picked up on the mood in the elevator and left them alone. 

“Enjoy your stay,” he comments as Bucky follows Steve out of the elevator. 

The first thing he notices is that they’re very high up.  Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he can see people on the streets below scaled to the size of ants.  Some of the surrounding buildings rise above them, but many buildings fall short. 

“Is this your apartment?” he asks Steve. 

“Yeah.  Let’s put our stuff down, and then we’ll go up to the Penthouse.  I want you to meet some people, if you’re feeling up to it.”

Bucky would rather not, but that desire wars with his desire to do whatever Steve wants him to.  He nods, silently, and Steve smiles at him.  So he made the right choice. 

Steve’s New York apartment is newer and sparser than his DC one.  It doesn’t look like Steve had much of a hand in decorating this apartment, and he rolls his eyes at the American flag décor throughout most of the living space. 

“Tony decorated all of our floors.  Pretty sure mine is the most garish, but it has a gym, and he switched out the older appliances for new ones pretty gradually, so it’s homey enough.  This can be your room while we’re here.”  He leads Bucky to a guest room decorated in red, white, and blue like the rest of the apartment, and then he walks away like Bucky needs time to settle in. 

Bucky dumps his bag on the floor and unzips it, digging around to see what Axel brought.  He didn’t pack the soft, blue sweater that Bucky and Yasha favor, but he did bring the grey hoodie that Axel and the asset wear near-constantly, so Bucky pulls that over his dark green t-shirt to put another layer between his mangled shoulder and the new people Steve wants to show him. 

He stuffs the iPod Steve got him into the pocket of his jeans, because he never likes to be away from music for long, and then he sits on the bed and stares at his shoes until Steve comes to collect him. 

They have to take another elevator up to the penthouse, and Bucky blankly wonders who they’ll meet there before it clicks.  Obviously, Tony Stark lives in his own penthouse, so he’s finally going to see the man who saved his life on SHIELD’s operating table.  Tony apparently has a girlfriend named Pepper whom Steve deeply respects, so maybe she’ll be there too. 

He’s not expecting the doors to slide open on a large table with six people sitting around it.  He scowls, a kneejerk reaction to so many eyes on him, and Steve gently takes his wrist and pulls him forward. 

“Bestill my comic-reading, eight-year-old heart,” the goateed man babbles.  “Cap and Bucky Barnes.”

“Hello,” the red-haired woman greets him in a much more subdued manner.  Bucky does a double-take when he recognizes her as the girl from the Red Room shower.  She’s older now, much more sure of herself, and Bucky flushes at the memory of being totally caught off-guard under her hands.

Natalia.  The Black Widow.  He remembers Yasha coming back to the apartment a few months ago and accusing all of them of keeping secrets from him.  None of them have seen her since then. 

He catches Steve watching him watch Natalia, and he turns his gaze to the next Avenger.  Beside Natalia is a blonde man with a contraption in his ear, then a bigger blonde man wearing a cape.  On the other side of the table are a black man wearing sunglasses, a curly-haired man surreptitiously checking a device in his lap, and the goateed man.  The goateed man is still talking, and Steve shoots quips back at him like they’re old friends.  Steve sits down at the head of the table and pulls Bucky to sit in the chair beside him. 

If he had to guess, Bucky can probably infer some of their names.  The black man is Fury; the man in the cape is Thor.   Steve talks about the Avengers sometimes, and whoever is playing Bucky always listens and reports back. 

It’s important that they know about Steve’s allies.  In the event that SHIELD decides having the former Winter Soldier so close to their precious Captain is a bad idea, they need to know who’s most likely to come for them.  The asset thinks it’s Iron Man and the Black Widow, though, sitting at the table with them, Bucky wonders if they wouldn’t just come en masse.  They all seem thrilled to see Steve, and they glance at Bucky before redirecting their attention back where it belongs. 

Natalia slides a black folder down the length of the table, and it comes to rest exactly in front of Steve, three inches from the edge of the table.  Bucky notices that all of the Avengers have these folders, though obviously, there’s no folder for him.  He unconsciously moves closer to Steve, wondering why Steve brought him to this meeting when he clearly isn’t wanted or needed. 

Steve flips the folder open and scans it quickly.  Bucky isn’t trying to see its contents, but it looks like a mission report, complete with photographs of Iron Man and the Hulk covered in something dark and slimy. 

“Both of these casualties were avoidable,” Steve says after he finishes scanning the information.  Bucky recognizes his CO voice, and as he looks around the table again, it dawns on him that Steve’s sitting at the head.  He swells with pride for Steve and all that he’s accomplished – now it seems that people can’t stop themselves from giving him armies to command.  He always knew that Steve had the tenacity and the talent, but he’s ashamed that he thought people would never take Steve seriously because of his size. 

The German doctor believed in him.  The US Army believed in him.  And Bucky, his best friend and lover, had wanted to tuck him away in the safest corner of Brooklyn and keep him far away from the war.

He started failing Steve long before he fell off that train. 

“When dealing with a toxic substance, such as powder, pollen, or slime, we need to use the containment formation.  Thor, it looks like you and Sif weren’t in the right quadrant, and that’s where we had casualties.  What happened?” Steve asks. 

“Captain, my sincerest apologies on behalf of myself and the Lady Sif.  We were in position, but Iron Man communicated to us that a homeless shelter in his quadrant had been the source of a dense slime attack, and our quadrant seemed untouched at the time.  We moved in to evacuate the shelter and saved many lives in doing so.” 

“Tony?” Steve inquires. 

“Yeah, I saw them hit the shelter, but I was on the offensive with the slimers themselves.  I needed extra hands in my quadrant, and they said they were standing around, waiting for action.”

“This says you were mission leader.  Why didn’t you move anyone back into quadrant E?”  Bucky can hear the tightness in Steve’s voice that says he’s disappointed his people aren’t handing a situation the way that _he_ would have.  Because more often than not, his way is the best way – that’s a fact that Bucky’s long accepted, as annoying as it can be. 

“Look, I had a lot on my plate, Cap,” Tony insists.  Steve raises an eyebrow, but then he pushes the folder in Bucky’s direction.  Bucky expects one of the others to snatch it away and bluster about confidentiality, but instead, their expressions are curious. 

“Bucky,” Steve says as Bucky stares Steve’s reflection in the lacquered surface of the table.  “Look over that and tell me what you think.” 

Bucky blinks.  What he thinks about what?  There’s a lot of information in the report, and while he dutifully scans over the words and images, he doesn’t know what Steve wants from him. 

Then he remembers that he was an enemy of the Avengers not too long ago.  More precisely, the asset’s Winter Soldier persona was an enemy of the Avengers.  They probably want a villain’s angle on the situation. 

The asset would be better at this, but he’s not going to shift with seven pairs of eyes on him – and every eye is on him now, even the curly-haired man’s, making his skin crawl.  He automatically shakes his head so his hair will cover his eyes, but he still knows better than to let them get a good look at a switch.  Inevitably, his body will go too slack in the second after he slides out but before the asset slides in, and someone might notice that something’s fishy. 

“Uh, toxic slime seems like an ineffectual way to kill mass quantities of people.  It moves pretty slowly.  And it didn’t seem to eat away at furniture.  Gas is probably better.” 

Some of the Avengers look nervously at each other, but Fury and Natalia keep their expressions neutral. 

“Not lookin’ for ideas to wipe out Schenectady, but thanks,” Fury says drily.  “Cap, maybe you should be more specific.” 

“Bucky, what do you think about it from a commander’s point of view?” Steve asks.  Bucky can hear the tension in his voice that means Bucky’s fucked up, but he’s playing it cool in front of his friends. 

He wonders what Steve’s playing at.  Even when Bucky was the second-in-command of the Howling Commandos, he never made the big tactical decisions.  His skills are much more aligned to the heat of the moment, when he had to decide whether they were advancing or retreating, redoubling their fire or showing clemency, and pursuing their mark or letting it get away. 

Maybe it does make sense.  In a different world, one where he was still Steve’s number two, he wouldn’t have screwed up the quadrant thing. 

“Quadrant E shouldn’t have gone uncovered.  Someone should have been moved there.  But this system is inflexible – there’s no one to cover or provide backup, which is why your problem happened in the first place.  You either need more bodies, or you need to redraw your lines and make sure there’s at least one floater available for situations like the shelter.” 

“I agree,” Steve says.  It surprises Bucky, because he doesn’t feel confident in his answer at all, but some of the other Avengers are nodding.  It’s not a fancy solution, though, so he feels a little patronized. 

“We’re trying to expand the rosters, as it were,” Tony breaks in.  “Get Cap back on active, and flush out a few more auxiliary members.  How’s that sound to you?” 

“Great,” Bucky answers, deadpan.  No one here actually wants his opinion anyway.  Beside him, Steve reaches out and smoothes Bucky’s hair back from his forehead like he sometimes does at home.  It makes Bucky’s stomach feel very tight in front of all these strangers. 

“So you think we’re doing good work here?” the other blonde man asks.  Bucky swivels his head to face him, feeling very overstimulated by so many people asking him questions.  It’s like being back at SHIELD, but the answers here aren’t black-and-white, factual recall answers.  They’re open-ended and pointless, but Bucky doesn’t want to disappoint Steve again.

“Yeah, sure.  Saving people, stopping egomaniacs from taking over New York.  I’m all for that.” 

“Seems a little strange, with your storied history,” Tony says. For some reason, Bucky thinks that Steve will step in to tell them to back off, but he doesn’t.  He looks at Bucky encouragingly, but leaves him to the wolves. 

“My head is clear now,” is the answer that Bucky finally comes up with.  It’s all that he can think of to diffuse the idea that he’s a threat, because that’s what this must be about.  This is somehow a test that Steve knowingly walked him right into; a test of his loyalty to Steve, and to his team and his missions by extent. 

And they are loyal – all four of them.  Even the asset, who’s the actual threat that Tony and the blonde man are trying to tease out. 

Before the Avengers can ask him any more questions, the door opens and another red-haired woman enters the room.  She’s taller and more freckled than Natalia, and Bucky recognizes her from visiting Steve in the hospital almost a year ago.  She moves with purpose into the room, tapping away at a phone with one hand and pointing with the other. 

“Food’s here.  I need two people to help me carry it.”  For some reason, all the Avengers immediately press their index fingers against their noses.  “Clint and Bruce,” the woman orders.  She turns and clicks back out of the room on her high, expensive shoes, and the blonde man and the curly-haired man stand up and follow her. 

Bucky wants to leave.  He creeps another inch closer to Steve, but he’s engaged in a conversation with Tony and Fury about the chemical properties of the slime, and he looks like he’s settled for the time being. 

Several minutes later, Clint, Bruce, and the woman reappear with over a dozen white boxes and bags of plates, plastic silverware, and tiny packets of sauce.  They arrange the items on the table, and the Avengers start to open the boxes and dish food out onto the plates.  Steve loads up a plate with some sort of spaghetti, rice, and little balls of cream-colored dough, and he puts it in front of Bucky before making his own plate.

It’s good, when Bucky tentatively starts to eat.  The food is greasy and seasoned, and he decides that he likes it.  He’ll have to tell the others. 

The talk around the table turns personal, and it gets very loud.  The red-haired woman pulls up a chair at the opposite end of the table and joins them, setting her phone aside and making herself a plate of meat covered in orange sauce.  Bucky kind of wants to try that, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself by reaching for it. 

Natalia asks him how he likes New York, but she’s several people down from him, and he feels like he has to shout to answer.  He averts his gaze instead, and when he looks at Steve, he sees that he’s staring back at Natalia. 

Bucky keeps eating slowly.  He wants to go back to Steve’s apartment and sleep. 

But Steve looks like he’s having fun – far more fun than he usually has watching movies or going for runs with Bucky.  So Bucky presses his lips together and makes himself sit still, look neutral, and avoid eye contact. 

Maybe Steve senses his discomfort, because a minute later, he rests his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck.  His hand is big and warm, and he leaves it there, squeezing intermittently. 

It almost helps. 

 

That night, when they’ve finally moved back to Steve’s apartment, Bucky lets himself drift under as soon as he pulls the door shut behind him.  It feels like minutes later, though, that he wakes up again in the bathroom, leaning against the wall and holding up a single finger. 

So one of the others, most likely Axel, wants Bucky back on top.  He’s exhausted, and he just wants to spend some time around people who aren’t constantly looking for signs that he’s bad for Steve. 

But apparently he’s needed.  He splashes cold water on his face and goes out into Steve’s red, white, and blue living room.  Steve looks up expectantly, and by now, Bucky can recognize the signs that they’re mid-conversation. 

“Can you start over?” he asks as he sinks on to the couch, folding his legs and dragging a pillow into his lap.  The pillow is blue with a collection of white stars sprinkled across it. 

“Okay,” Steve says easily.  He’s used to this, too.  Bucky loves how calm Steve can be about his switching, even if Steve doesn’t recognize it for what it is. 

But it’s thoughts like those that lead to dangerous places.  He reminds himself how much it would hurt Steve to have him committed, and directs his attention back into the conversation. 

“Fury just texted me to let me know their consensus.  They were impressed with you,” Steve tells him.  His voice is warm, and he’s smiling softly at Bucky. 

“Today was mostly so they could see that you were recovered and stable.  I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you that ahead of time, but I didn’t want you to go in feeling like you were on trial.”  It hadn’t been that hard to pick up on, though. 

“Anyway, you impressed them.  You were shy, but when you did talk, it wasn’t hard to see _you_.  And they were sold,” Steve continues.  Bucky doesn’t know where this is going. 

“Sold on what?” he bites.  Steve beams at him, and Bucky’s almost positive he’ll agree to whatever Steve is about to suggest, just so he’ll keep looking that proud and excited. 

“It’s completely your call, but we want to offer you an auxiliary spot on the Avengers.  That’s what Sam has,” Steve adds when Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.  “We call them in whenever we can’t handle a situation by ourselves.  Sam probably gets involved about once a month, though he could be involved more or less if he wanted to.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say.  He doesn’t feel like he’s anywhere near the league of the people he met today – they have magic, or state of the art technology, or freakish powers of mutation.  He almost laughs at the idea that he’s anything like them. 

Then he remembers that Steve doesn’t have any of that – Steve has a few ounces of serum and gallons of gumption.  And he has the serum too, technically.  That doesn’t mean that he’s a fighter like –

The asset.  He’s who they want.  Not Bucky. 

“You want the Winter Soldier to become a backup Avenger?” he asks, just to make sure he’s clear.  Maybe he’s misinterpreting the whole thing.  Steve must hear the doubt in his voice, because his smile falters. 

“You absolutely don’t have to – it’s just an idea.  But I’ve been thinking about…about how we’ve been in a rut lately.”  It’s nice of Steve to include himself in that assessment, though he’s not fooling anyone.  “And it didn’t feel like you were in that rut when you were protecting me last fall.  I wanted to give you the opportunity to do that again – protect people.”

“What makes you think,” Bucky asks coldly before he really thinks over his words, “that I have the slightest interest in protecting anyone besides you?” 

Steve’s smile drops entirely, and Bucky truly ponders it before saying anything else.  It’s been nice, the past several months, knowing that his hands haven’t hurt anyone.  He’s lived an unbloodied existence for the first time in ages, and it’s peaceful. 

On the other hand, the asset isn’t suited for domestic life.  He’s bred to kill, and Bucky doesn’t know what the consequences will be if they pen him in and constrict him.  He’s already cranky and angry constantly – but is that all that will happen?  Or will he snap at some point?  And how badly? 

The asset does have some semblance of a moral compass, but he craves violence and aggression like oxygen.  It’s hardwired into him, and the only reason he’s been so amenable to Bucky’s plan so far is because Bucky promised him it was temporary. 

Maybe Steve’s right, and temporary solutions aren’t going to work anymore.  Bucky knows better to believe in permanence, but he acknowledges that he doesn’t know how long temporary will last at this point. 

He could live with the asset being an Avenger and getting his violence out that way.  He could watch Steve’s back, and the people he hurt would be bad guys looking to hurt innocent people.  There are far worse ways for him to channel his blood thirst. 

But that would mean that Steve would see the asset in his element.  Steve is constantly looking for triggers, taking notes when he thinks Bucky isn’t looking, and trying to find the source of his brainwashing, or memory problems, or whatever theory Steve’s working off of at any given time.  Seeing the asset fight might be too revealing for his little detective hunt – at some point, he’d probably figure out that Bucky quite literally becomes a different man in battle. 

“I’ll think about it.  Give me 24 hours,” Bucky requests.  Steve doesn’t look so excited anymore, but he nods. 

“Of course.  It’s an invitation, and I’m okay with whatever you decide.”  Except he sounds nervous.  Nervous that Bucky won’t take him up on his offer, or nervous that he will? 

“I’m going to bed,” Bucky announces, though it’s barely nine o’clock.  Steve nods, like he’d expected that Bucky would be worn out.  It’s ridiculous if Steve actually expects Bucky to fight beside him, but fighting an entire slime-robot army sounds less tiring than sitting in a room of people judging him for two hours.  Maybe Steve gets that and maybe he doesn’t. 

Bucky falls onto the bed as soon as he closes the door behind him, and he sinks under before he can undress.  Someone else can deal with that – right now, he needs to talk to the asset. 

Luckily the asset and Axel are in the apartment when he gets there.  He rehashes the meeting and meal with the Avengers, and he sees the gleam in the asset’s eye even before he gets to the offer they extended via Steve. 

“Yes,” the asset practically salivates. 

“Not just your decision,” Bucky reminds him. 

“Hell it isn’t,” the asset argues.  “Just send me out whenever they need someone dead.” 

“I think they generally try to avoid lethal force,” Bucky tells him. 

The asset scowls.  “Maimed,” he adjusts. 

“I think it’s a good idea,” Axel says.  “Steve gets back-up, the asset gets to run, and maybe we can stop some innocent people from getting hurt.”  It’s incredibly clear which of those the asset cares about, but Bucky’s glad that some of them want to fight for the right reasons – or at least, the reasons which Steve would consider to be right.  He’s not sure that he’s really qualified to mete out decisions about good and bad.  He’s not sure that he isn’t the very thing the Avengers would find deserving of lethal force, if they knew about the schism deep in his mind. 

“When do I start?” the asset asks, delighted.  Permission from Axel is all he really needs, because even if the others don’t agree now, Axel will get them to come around. 

The asset spends a considerable time sitting in the corner and mumbling to himself after that, probably strategizing and reworking his battle plans now that he’s not allowed to accidentally catch civilians in the crossfire.  Bucky and Axel sit together in front of the couch, and Bucky describes the dinner and all of the Avengers in greater detail. 

Bucky doesn’t hide things from his brothers, but there are so many details from the outside world, and sometimes they don’t all get shared.  Like Steve’s hand on his neck during dinner – Yasha and the asset have no use for that information. 

But he tells Axel everything.  He sometimes feels like if Axel doesn’t know about something, there’s no tangible proof that it happened.  So he tells him about the hand and how it made him feel safe.  How it reminded him of the morning recently when they held their hands over Steve’s pulse.  How it felt familiar and new all at once, and how he’d been afraid that someone would notice while in the same breath, he wanted Steve’s team to see the connection that he and Steve somehow still have.

All four of them are in love with Steve, to some degree.  He’s the main character in most of the stories they told for sixty years.  He’s kind and loving to lost, scarred souls like them.  He’s the sun, and they’re the planets drawn into his orbit and unwilling to drift away.  He’s amazing, and they refuse to take him of the pedestal they know they’ve placed him on.

The asset doesn’t really love conventionally – he loves Steve like a soldier loves his general. 

Yasha’s young and uninterested in men – he loves Steve like like devotees love their idol. 

Axel probably would love Steve romantically, but he’s too good of a brother for that – he loves Steve like a best friend or a family member.

And Bucky can admit to Axel, and only Axel, that his fingers constantly itch to trace the knobs of Steve’s spine and lick the taste of coffee out of his mouth.  And he doesn’t even like coffee.  He loves Steve like a naïve, cocky jerk in Brooklyn loves his little, blond punk who gets into more fights and catches more colds than anyone in the borough. 

So when Bucky tells Axel about the comforting touch, Axel smiles knowingly and repeats his mantra.  As always, it falls on deaf ears. 

“Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to get close to Steve,” he suggests gently. 

“Maybe Steve would figure out the truth, and we’d wind up in another cell,” Bucky fires back.  He expects it to end there, but Axel pursues it today. 

“I become more and more convinced that Steve could handle the truth.  He’s a good man, and he can still touch you knowing what the asset’s done.  Hell, he wants the asset to fight for him.  He’s not holding our past against you,” Axel says gently. 

Bucky snorts.

“He doesn’t know about the freak show in here,” he says. 

“To be fair, there can’t be many people like us.  We don’t know how this world would react to four people sharing one body.” 

Axel angers Bucky, because they’ve had this conversation before.  Axel is too curious for his own good, and he wants to do research and find out if there are other people with this affliction.  Bucky refuses to risk searching out that information – he knows about things like search history, and he knows that Tony Stark can see what he does on the tablet.  On Steve’s, too.  Corroboration that they’re fucked up isn’t worth the potential exposure. 

“You really think that anything Department X created can be _normal_?” he asks.

“Not normal, but maybe not completely unique either,” Axel argues.  “You told us about the story of Jekyll and Hyde – this has happened before, Bucky.” 

“That’s a fictional story!” Bucky yells.  The asset looks at him curiously, but goes back to his mumbling and gesturing.  “It’s a horror story, like Dracula or Frankenstein.  People don’t feel sorry for the monster in those stories – they tell them to scare and disgust people!”

“We are not monsters,” Axel argues.  “We’re people.  We have the ability to care, and the ability to think.  We don’t blindly hurt.  Even he doesn’t,” Axel says, pointing to the asset.  He knows that he’s cutting off Bucky’s next point, so Bucky scowls and jumps ahead. 

“I still can’t live with Steve knowing.  Even if he doesn’t hurt us, or lock us up, or do something else that he thinks is for our own good, he’d know what happened.  He’d see it whenever he looked at us.  And I can’t deal with his pity or his disgust.  I’ll disappear,” he threatens. 

Axel sighs.  “You’re too dramatic.  You’re stuck on Karpov.  You still think this is all your fault.  It’s not.  And Steve would see that,” he says gently.   

Bucky glares.  He and Axel used to share the guilt over what happened with Karpov and the early days with Lukin, but lately, Axel’s talking like he can just decide to get over it. 

He’s leaving Bucky in the dust.  They’re all getting better and healthier and happier, and Bucky’s having the hardest time letting go.  He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s the original, or because he’s the most fucked up, but he feels phantom angry tears welling up in his eyes at Axel’s words. 

He doesn’t have anything to say to that.  So he picks an easier target.

“Stop telling me what to do with Steve.  All you know about love is the fucking plot of _Casablanca_ – and you won’t even let me tell you the ending,” he accuses. 

“I like to think about-” Axel starts, but Bucky cuts him off. 

“You just want to go on thinking that Ilsa picks Rick, but she doesn’t!  That’s how it ends – she gets on the plane with Victor, and Rick and the French guy decide to become freedom fighters.  That’s how it ends!” 

“I don’t like that ending,” Axel says, annoyed. 

“But it’s what happens!  And it’s what’s happening here – I’m Rick, and I’m not pursuing Steve because I know he’s better off with someone else.  It would be nice if Rick and Ilsa ended up together, but that’s not how love works.  Sometimes, you have to make the sacrifice play so the other person can be happy.”

“But then you’re miserable,” Axel counters. 

“It’s better than them being miserable.  And you get to see them be happy, and you know that it’s the right thing.  So you’re not as miserable.  It’s cyclical,” Bucky says. 

Axel gives it a few minutes of thought while Bucky stews.  When he finally starts to calm down, Axel speaks again. 

“So I am the French guy?”  Bucky has to think for a moment, but then he lets out a breath.  He recognizes the olive branch, and he grasps at it because he doesn’t like fighting with Axel. 

“Yes.  You’re the pervy French guy.”

“Who’s the asset?” Axel asks with a small smile. 

“Uh, he’s the shifty-eyed guy who killed the couriers.” 

“Who’s Yasha?”  Bucky snorts. 

“He’s the dopey Russian bartender.”  Axel laughs, and everything feels alright.  Then Axel speaks again quietly. 

“You’re still wrong.  And I’m getting tired of following your lead when I think it’s self-destructive.  You need to say something to Steve.  Or I will.” 

“Oh, you will?” Bucky challenges.  He feels a chill at what Axel, or any of them, could do rogue.  This only works as long as they maintain a common purpose. 

“Maybe I have already.  Maybe I know you too well,” Axel says calmly.  Bucky’s eyes widen and he stares at Axel. 

“What did you do?” he asks, cold and nervous.  Axel bends forward and presses a kiss to Bucky’s temple.  They can’t really feel things like that in here, but he sees it, and his mind fills in the brush of lips against his skin as a slight pressure. 

“I’m looking out for you, little brother,” Axel says.  Bucky’s afraid of what he means by that. 

 

Steve takes them sight-seeing around the city.  Yasha is fascinated by the Statue of Liberty, and Axel sees the site of the Chitauri attack.  Steve tries to take Bucky into Brooklyn, but he freezes, and convinces him that he really wants to see Central Park instead.    

They spend a few days doing what they normally do in DC, only with more walking and subway rides.  Steve’s having a good time, and the apartment is satisfactory, so Bucky doesn’t particularly care when or if they go home. 

On the third day of their stay in New York, however, Bucky wakes up and stumbles out into the kitchen to warm up the kettle for tea.  He stops in his tracks when he sees Sharon Carter sitting on the counter and playfully swinging her leg, hitting Steve as he drops bread into the toaster. 

“You’re a nuisance,” Steve tells her, clearly joking.  She grins as he grabs her leg and pretends to yank her off the counter, stopping centimeters before her bottom reaches the edge of the surface.  She laughs, delighted, and then leans in to mutter something quietly.  Steve tilts his head so her lips are right by his ear, and whatever she whispers makes him nod silently. 

Feeling like he’s interrupting something he’s not supposed to see, Bucky backs out of the kitchen and thinks about retreating to his room.  But his room is too close to the kitchen, and he wants more distance than that. 

He wants a lot of distance.  The farther away he gets, the less likely he is to think about if this is how Steve and Sharon act when they think he’s not around.  The familiarity of their interaction chafes against his mind, and he presses the button for the elevator and slips inside without further thought. 

“Where to, Mr. Barnes?” the voice asks politely.  Bucky knows his name is JARVIS, but no one’s told him where in the building JARVIS broadcasts from.  Or why he always seems to be on duty.

“Roof,” Bucky requests, making a quick decision.  JARVIS answers in the affirmative, and a minute later, Bucky’s stepping out onto the roof of one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan. 

It’s windy out here, and he hugs his sweatshirt tighter around his body.  He can see in every direction even though it’s overcast, and the clouds over his head look much closer than the tiny signs of life down below his feet. 

He shuffles over to a bricked patio area stuffed with plants and metal furniture.  It doesn’t look like this area is used much, but it’s set up to allow a mid-sized group of people to enjoy the outdoors in this concrete jungle, more than a hundred stories up in the air. 

He sits heavily, noticing that increasing his distance from the couple in the kitchen hasn’t stopped his mind from reeling around their memory. 

He tries to push it away.  He doesn’t know what he saw, and the absolute worst case scenario is that Steve and Sharon really are together, and hiding their relationship from Bucky to salve his feelings. 

It’s exactly what he told Axel – Steve’s better off with someone else.  He knows it rationally – so why does it feel like something’s squeezing his chest and trying to shatter his ribs? 

He thinks he’d prefer broken ribs to this.  He knows exactly how long it takes his ribs to heal.  He doesn’t know when this hurt will go away. 

Steve finds him ten minutes later, slumped forward in a chair and resting his chin in his palm.  He looks up as Steve walks barefoot across the roof, and distantly thinks that Steve should put some shoes on. 

“Hey,” Steve says, sitting down beside Bucky.  Bucky nods in greeting, and Steve puts a hand over his knee. 

“Are you okay?” he asks.  Bucky nods again.  The pain isn’t real, so he’s fine. 

“Look, this is the first time you’ve needed to get away from me, so I’m guessing it has something to do with Sharon?” 

“No.  I was just surprised to see her.  Isn’t she supposed to be in DC?” Bucky asks as levelly as he can. 

“Sometimes yes, sometimes she travels,” Steve tells him.  _Travels with you?,_ Bucky wants to ask. 

“Okay, this might be too forward, but on the chance that this is what’s bothering you…Sharon and I aren’t dating.  Haven’t dated,” Steve adds.

“I really don’t care who’s in your life, Steve,” Bucky lies.  He must not do a very good job of it, even though he lies to Steve constantly now. 

“You say that, but I’m getting jealousy vibes from you.  Don’t play dumb, Bucky,” Steve scolds when Bucky grits his teeth and sighs.  “You know I know what that looks like.  We’ve spent way too much time being jealous.  You slept your way through half the girls in Brooklyn, and I had to have a war sweetheart for the tabloids.  We did what we had to, and we both felt sore as hell about it.”

“It’s different now,” Steve continues.  “It took me a while to believe that, and you’ll eventually believe it too.  You don’t have to hide if you feel that way anymore.  You don’t have to fight tooth and nail to keep people from finding out.  Like you did with Dr. Strange.” 

Of course he brings that up.  Bucky knows what the asset did to convince Steve to keep Strange out of his head, and he had a feeling that the kiss would come back to curse them. 

“What didn’t you want him to see?” Steve asks gently, confirming Bucky’s thoughts. 

“That.  What you said.  Us being together like a married couple in Brooklyn, and sneaking around foxholes in Europe trying not to get caught.” 

The wind picks up and swoops through Steve’s hair, destroying the perfect, off-center part that’s always made him look like a square.  Bucky reaches out and tries to fix Steve’s stupid hair automatically, and Steve moves closer to let him. 

“You think you’ll ever want that again?” Steve asks.  He says it quietly, and Bucky can barely hear over the noise of the wind. 

He doesn’t know if Steve means with him, or in general.  He flushes with humiliation at potentially guessing wrong. 

“Maybe,” he keeps it vague.  Steve groans and leans forward to rest his forehead on Bucky’s good shoulder.  Bucky doesn’t untangle his fingers from Steve’s hair. 

“You’re maddening,” Steve tells him with a dry laugh.  He turns his head and tucks his nose into Bucky’s neck.  It tickles when he exhales. 

“I apologize if I seem impatient,” Steve tells him a minute later.  “Take your time in figuring out what you want.” 

Bucky feels frozen.  It’s almost a declaration, except he’s still fuzzy on the details.  It’s like Steve is trusting him to read between the lines, but Bucky’s so spun out with hope and self-hatred that he genuinely doesn’t know.  He doesn’t know if Steve is promising himself to Bucky, or if Steve is telling him that he wants someone too badly to wait for Bucky.

And he still doesn’t get Sharon’s role in this.  So they’re not dating, and they haven’t dated…but that doesn’t mean they won’t.  Maybe Steve’s interested in her until Bucky pulls himself together.  Maybe he’s picking her instead of Bucky because he’s tired of being impatient.  Maybe she’s really just a friend, and he has every intention of waiting for Bucky to come to grips with the situation. 

But that last idea sounds too much like Axel.  It’s too good to be true.  And Bucky really doesn’t want Steve to be miserable.  _You’re maddening_ , he said. 

He wonders if Rick ever regretted not getting on the plane with Ilsa. 

 

* * *

 

A few days after Bucky agrees to join the Avengers roster, several permanent and auxiliary members get together in Stark Tower to train.  Steve and Bucky head down in the elevator dressed in work-out gear, and Bucky asks Steve to knot the empty sleeve of his Under Armor so it won’t distract him. 

Bucky’s in his most relaxed and amenable mood today.  He smiles as he watches cartoons while eating breakfast, and he makes Steve a cup of coffee exactly the way he likes it. 

He’s almost in too good of a mood.  There’s something about him right now that feels very childish to Steve, and he’s afraid that the other Avengers will eat him alive.  He almost calls the sparring off when Clint partners Bucky and Natasha, but Bucky seems excited.  He absolutely checks Natasha out as she stretches, which Steve pretends doesn’t sting.  It’s not that he has a problem with Bucky appreciating Natasha, because Steve’s done it too, but Bucky won’t even tell him whether or not Steve has a chance with him. 

Bucky and Natasha line up on the mat, and the other Avengers drift closer to see what Bucky can do.  They’ve all seen the footage from Washington, but he’s conspicuously down a metal arm, and they’re both unarmed for this first fight. 

“You sure you’re up for this, Barnes?” Natasha taunts calculatingly.  Bucky closes his eyes, and when he opens them, his entire demeanor changes. 

He strolls forward to meet her, the swagger of the Winter Soldier back in his step, and Steve feels a shiver of unease when he remembers how casually cruel Bucky had been in their fight on the bridge. 

Natasha throws the first kick, and then they’re off. 

What follows is ruthless and bloody.  Natasha goes for Bucky’s defenseless side, but he lets her audibly crack a rib before twisting her hand and breaking her wrist.  She weaves away and tries to smash his nose, but he punches her in the stomach and dances backwards, only for her to sweep his feet out from underneath him. 

He rolls with the fall, getting an elbow to her knee, and she jumps away from him, focused like she’s in an actual fight and not a controlled sparring exercise in Stark’s gym. 

Except they’re thirty seconds in and Steve counts at least one broken bone on each side.  Normally they curb their damage when they spar, but it looks like they each have something to prove.  Maybe Natasha wasn’t the best partner for Bucky – they have a history, and Steve recognizes that they know too many of the same moves.  They were trained by the same or similar people, and Bucky wants to win his first fight almost as much as Natasha doesn’t want to lose Bucky’s first fight. 

She shatters his collarbone.  He bites her leg and draws blood when she tries to choke him with her thighs.

JARVIS alerts them when Natasha loses too much blood to safety continue.  The mat, which is already red, is slippery with her blood, and Bucky navigates around it as he walks over to Steve. 

He’s smiling, and his teeth are stained red. 

Steve hands him a water bottle. 

They watch a few more matches on other mats, and Bucky seems to get bored quickly of just watching others fight.  Steve sees him drift over to the weight machines and settle in there, but eventually, Clint calls him back to spar with Steve. 

This probably should have been the first match, though Steve doesn’t have any guarantee that Bucky won’t be as brutal with him as he had with Natasha.  But at least they’re even matched for strength, serum versus serum, and Steve will heal more quickly than Natasha will. 

He feels a thrum under his skin as Bucky lunges for him and twists in mid-air to punch his kidneys instead of his face.  Steve forces him back several feet with a kick, and then Bucky weaves around his punches to knee him in the back. 

Somehow, even though he and Bucky have only fought like this as enemies, their steps weave together like a dance.  He doesn’t know most of Bucky’s moves, but he thinks that he can read his body, and he’s prepared to counter almost every attack.  Almost. 

There’s a sharp thrill that he feels down his spine and into his balls from fighting with Bucky.  They’re formidable fighting each other, but he just knows they’ll be even better when they have a common foe.  Bucky probably breaks Steve’s jaw, and Steve crushes Bucky’s hand, and the adrenaline is is like being zapped by Vita-rays all over again.  Especially when Bucky punches him _with his shattered hand_ , and Steve gapes at him, feeling like they could march out of this tower as a team and take on any villain right now. 

After the fight, they go back to their apartment and shower.  They don’t have to take shifts in this apartment because there’s two full bathrooms, so Steve stands under the spray, letting the water soothe his aching muscles and jaw, knowing that Bucky’s doing the same thing only a few feet away on the other side of the wall. 

He’s excited.  He’s nervous.  He’s ready to bring Bucky into actual fights, and he’s ready to trust that he can hold his own, even with one arm, and that Steve doesn’t have to keep an eye on him at all times.

That had taken awhile to get the hang of in Europe.  Steve was constantly worrying about Bucky’s position, and if he was too exposed, and if he had enough ammo. 

But he clearly doesn’t have to do that anymore.  He can devote all of his worrying about Bucky to the normal things, like why his moods flip back and forth and why Steve still catches him in a memory blank from time to time. 

He replays the morning in his head and looks for anything amiss.  Apart from his violent frenzy, Bucky had seemed normal, for him at least.  He’d been normal before the fight, and normal on their elevator ride back from the fight.  The interim had been a change in demeanor, but a lot of the Avengers do that.  Clint goes from his goofy, lazy self to a fearsome, diligent fighter, and Natasha goes even further into her focused mindset. 

Steve saw the Winter Soldier today, and it didn’t seem like anything triggered him.  The part of Bucky that can fight like that is independent of the brainwashed part of him – and he can pull himself out of attack mode and hum in the elevator afterwards. 

It feels like a victory on a test that Steve hadn’t been willing to acknowledge until it happened. 

Still smiling through the pain in his jaw, Steve steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist.  He leaves the steamy bathroom and walks back into his room to get dressed, thinking about what he wants to eat for lunch. 

He stops short when he sees Bucky sitting on his bed, damp from his own shower and completely naked. 

“What’s up?” he asks, more surprised than anything.  Bucky’s showers are always longer than Steve’s; it’s a point of fact. 

Bucky gets up and crosses the room in a few steps.  Steve stares at him, suddenly wary, as Bucky reaches for him and runs his fingers down Steve’s chest to the precarious towel. 

“Bucky,” Steve starts before Bucky’s fingers dip under the towel and pull it away from his body.  It pools between their feet, and Steve stares at Bucky as he steps onto the crumpled towel and cups Steve’s face with his broken hand.

Steve feels the press of their bodies from his thighs up to his chest, and he swallows, suddenly dry-mouthed.  He feels his cock stir from being pressed up against Bucky’s, but what really overwhelms him is when Bucky’s cock twitches back. 

Is Bucky ready for this?  Is he?  This is absolutely not the time Steve would have anticipated Bucky would change his mind, though of course, Bucky’s mercurial in this like in everything else.  One day, he won’t admit whether or not he has feelings for Steve, and the next, he jumps him. 

Then Bucky leans up to kiss him, and his jaw aches at Bucky presses their lips together. 

 _He’s_ not ready.  He needs to be able to kiss Bucky if they’re going to do this – otherwise it’s cold and emotionless. 

He squeezes Bucky’s shoulders and is about to push him away, but Bucky pulls back first. 

“Remember when I told you to be patient with me?  The book, in the SHIELD cell?”  Steve nods, mouth hanging open as his thoughts try to catch up to the present. 

“I didn’t mean hang back and wait for me to make the first move.  I won’t,” Bucky says.  Steve looks down at their bodies, his own cock already leaking precum from the slight friction against Bucky’s.  “I won’t again,” Bucky amends.  “I’m having trouble seeing how you’d want me with the arm, and with my past.  You need to be very clear, and you need to show me.” 

Bucky licks at an errant drop of water on Steve’s neck; it makes him shiver.  Then Bucky pulls away from him and turns to go. 

“Don’t bring up this conversation again.  I’ll hopefully forget it happened.” 

Steve gapes after him, trying to catch his breath like he’s just run a few marathons. 

He locks the door and pulls out his tablet to take notes, but he doesn’t even know where to begin. 

 

That night, Bucky’s behaving like he doesn’t remember coming on to Steve at all.  He’s watching the History Channel and eating peanut butter from the jar, and he fusses over Steve’s jaw and offers to get him ice. 

When Bucky announces that he’s going to bed, Steve follows him.  He gently stops Bucky from shutting the door, and Bucky looks nervous. 

Steve licks his lips.  “Can I sleep with you tonight?  After the fight, I feel like this is one of those nights where I’m going to need to check on you.”  Bucky nods slowly and pushes the door back open with his foot. 

 _Be very clear_ , he’d said.  Steve swallows as he kicks his slippers off and slides into the bed behind Bucky, keeping a few inches between them. 

“Also, I miss sleeping beside you.”  Bucky turns off the light by his bed and settles down, tense.  Steve closes his eyes, and they pretend to sleep, unmoving for several hours before they finally fall under.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ronaldo's office - Bucky  
> Staring/pulse - Bucky  
> Sparring - asset  
> Puttin' on the moves - Axel  
> Sleepytime - Bucky
> 
> Next chapter, the game is up.


	5. Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Labrine helped with the German - thank you! 
> 
> And Ce, my occasional beta and always idea-bouncer - thank you as well.

Somehow, their long weekend in New York turns into well over a month.  Steve asks Bucky, but he says he doesn’t have a preference where they live.  Steve prefers DC, but Bucky has more people to interact with here, and it seems to be doing him some good.  His moods are still unstable, but he can usually talk to the other Avengers and their significant others who live in the tower without looking like he’s seconds from attacking or running. 

So they settle in a little more.  Steve takes Bucky shopping, and they buy more clothes.  Now that he’s training regularly, Bucky quickly packs on the muscle that leaned gradually during his confinement, and most of his preferred baggy clothes are suddenly too tight anyway.

There’s plenty to keep them busy.  Three days after Bucky signs on, there’s a Goblin attack on the Raft prison.  A week later, they get a video call from Charles Xavier alerting them to an attack on the city led by the Brotherhood of Mutants. 

Bucky’s a valuable addition to their team.  He’s their most versatile member, as effective sharpshooting from a roof as he is charging their foes head-on and leaving the crunch of broken bones in his wake. 

He kills a goblin on their first mission.  Steve reminds him afterwards that their objective is to incapacitate, and Bucky seems remorseful. 

He kills a mutant on their second mission, and Steve sees it out of the corner of his eye. 

“Barnes, you do _not_ have a kill order!” Steve yells over the open connection, aware that all of the Avengers can hear him.  “Stand the hell down, or you’re off this team!”  He slips back into Army parlance, swinging his shield to knock down a mutant who can shoot spikes out of his mouth while feeling the pull of déjà vu grounding him to a spot on a hill in Poland when Bucky had taken aim at unmarked German vehicles like Zola was riding shotgun in every one. 

His stomach knots when Bucky doesn’t show up on time for the briefing, and he realizes that he’s never been mad at Bucky in this century.  Apart from their scuffle in the SHIELD cell, they’ve never even argued.  He fidgets in his seat, needing to find Bucky and get his location, at least so he knows Bucky’s not gone for good. 

But then Bucky walks in late, scowling apologetically, and takes responsibility for his error before anyone at the table can call him out on it. 

“I know I fucked up, and he wasn’t a big enough threat for a kill shot.  I realize that my actions were at odds with the stated mission of this team, and it won’t happen again.”  His words sound rehearsed and somewhat reluctant, like someone ground the apology out of him.  Nick and Natasha look at Steve, impressed.

But Steve hasn’t even spoken to Bucky since the fight. 

 

Steve wakes up one morning, sweat gluing his skin to his t-shirt and perspiration on his face damply catching the breeze from the open window.  He hears the sounds of the city at seven in the morning stirring outside, but Bucky sleeps on, snoring lightly and curling his body into and around Steve’s like it isn’t boiling under the blanket. 

Ever since Bucky kissed Steve and walked away, they’ve been sharing Bucky’s bed almost every night, unless he’s in his darker mood.  It’s unusual for Steve to wake up with an armful of him, though.  Bucky’s very observant of their space, and he’s quick to wake if Steve accidentally – or not so accidentally – brushes against him in the night. 

Apparently last night was different.  Apparently Bucky didn’t notice himself folding into the negative space around Steve’s body, or he did but decided not to freak out about it.  Either way, Steve’s instincts want to move away from the heat, but he forces himself to stay still. 

Slowly, he wakes up more and realizes that getting to hold Bucky while he sleeps - vulnerable and, for once, uncomplicated – is a rare privilege, and certainly one that’s worth a little discomfort. 

Steve adjust his shoulders so Buck’s head can rest on his chest instead of propping against Steve’s shoulder awkwardly, and it frees up his right arm.  He experimentally wraps it around Bucky, but he’s afraid that Bucky will suddenly wake up and think he’s being held down. 

He tries splaying his arm out towards Bucky’s side of the bed, but he’s incredibly conscious of the fact that Bucky might not feel safe enough in his sleep to curl up against Steve again for a while. 

In the end, he cradles his hand against the back of Bucky’s skull, feeling the thin, brown strands against his fingertips and the warm solidity of Bucky’s skin and bone underneath. 

This is where the mystery is.  Inside Bucky’s head, which is small enough to cradle in Steve’s palm and so breakable under the right force, live the secrets to what Department X did to him, how they kept him for so long, and why his memory is patchy even in the present. 

The night that Bucky told Steve to be more clear about his feelings, he also admitted to the memory problem.  _I’ll hopefully forget this conversation happened,_ he said. 

And now that it’s a concrete detail, it’s a definite set-back.  Steve has reservations about taking Bucky out with the Avengers, but his memory flickers never seem to affect his work.  It’s why Steve hasn’t shared this information with anyone else yet, not even Sam.  Because he thinks it might bench Bucky, and he doesn’t want to take that from him without a better understanding of what he does and doesn’t forget. 

Bucky shrugs when he asks him head-on, so he keeps collecting clues.  He tests Bucky by asking him questions about the previous day, or their morning, and Bucky usually recalls details fairly accurately.  He tests him about Avengers business and his phone check-ins with Ronaldo too, with reasonable results.  But he also finds himself scaffolding important information for Bucky, repeating it several times and prompting Bucky with context before team meetings and meals. 

So he can work around this, and he needs Bucky to see that.  He’ll rehash the recent past every morning if he has to, but he doesn’t care about the memory gaps any more than he cares about Bucky’s lost arm; he wishes deeply that Bucky weren’t missing them, but he doesn’t love him any less because of it. 

Bucky starts to stir and mutter sleepily, and Steve scritches at his scalp with resignation.  He’s about to pull his hand away and make it easier for Bucky to roll away when Bucky picks up his head and stares at Steve with gummy eyes, one of which is more open than the other. 

“Morning,” Steve greets him with a too-bright smile. 

“Mmm,” Bucky agrees.  Instead of shifting his weight, he drops his head back down and settles into the juncture between Steve’s neck and shoulder.  Steve can feel the rough of Bucky’s chapped lips against the sensitive skin of his neck, and when Bucky doesn’t move for several seconds, he tentatively puts his hand back and resumes stroking Bucky’s head. 

He drapes his other arm over Bucky’s waist, and Bucky lets him. 

He tucks his nose into Bucky’s hair and breathes him in, and Bucky lets him. 

Steve really doesn’t intend to do anything else, but Bucky sighs against his neck, and the little puff of hot air is like a confidence injection right to the impulsive part of his brain.  He rolls to his right, pushing Bucky onto his side and facing him eye-to-eye.  He licks his lips and looks at Bucky’s mouth, making his intention clear.  He gives Bucky a minute to pull away. 

Bucky takes him up on it, twisting to throw his feet over the side of the bed and standing up quickly.  Steve winces and laughs depreciatingly at himself, then he follows Bucky’s example and gets out of bed.  He groans as more of his skin finally comes into contact with the breeze from the window, and he quickly reaches into his boxers to pull his overeager cock against his lower abdomen and hold it in place with the elastic of his underwear. 

At this point, he doesn’t have a plan for being clear about his feelings with Bucky.  Some days Bucky likes being touched, and other days, he’s skittish.  Some days he’ll practically drape himself across Steve’s lap while they sit on the couch and read or watch TV, but other days, he looks like it pains him to let Steve in his personal space.  It’s one step forward, two steps back. Two steps forward, one step back. 

Nothing about Bucky, from his recovery to his memory issues to his affection, is linear.  The people around Steve who see Bucky more sporadically all tell Steve that Bucky’s more personable and even-keeled than he was when they first met him, and Steve’s inclined to believe them.  He does believe that Bucky’s healing and settling in to his freedom and this century.  But from his perspective, the bigger picture is obscured by the little backs and forths, and he’s accepted that all he can really do sometimes is to take his cues from Bucky and reevaluate every few hours. 

Of course he wonders if they’ll ever get to the point where they can have something like they used to have. 

But he’ll also take this. 

He finds Bucky brushing his teeth in the bathroom they started sharing around the same time that they started sleeping in the same bed, and he meets Bucky’s gaze in the mirror as he takes his own toothbrush and runs the faucet over it before squeezing out a dollop of toothpaste.  Unlike the bed, that’s something they’ve shared since Bucky moved in, along with shaving cream and bar soap. 

Bucky grins at his reflection sheepishly, so he hasn’t yet lost the almost-kiss to his memory void.  But he doesn’t seem upset about it either, so they watch each other as they lean against the counter and brush their teeth, taking turns spitting into the sink.  Steve notices something as Bucky does it. 

“I have a question, and you don’t have to answer it,” he says.  It’s how he starts all of his questions about Bucky’s captivity. 

“Yeah?” Bucky asks with wariness, like he does every time Steve asks about his captivity. 

“Your teeth.  What happened to your crowns?  Do you need dental work?”  Bucky runs his tongue over his back teeth, his face crinkling in surprise. 

“Oh.  I forgot about those.  These aren’t my teeth,” he says nonchalantly.  He swings his hand against the doorframe as he leaves the bathroom, and Steve sputters on toothpaste.  He quickly rinses his mouth and follows Bucky out into the kitchen. 

“Okay, I didn’t know you could get your teeth replaced.  Are they dentures?”  Bucky scoffs as he opens the refrigerator and stares inside.  He debates for a minute and then pulls out the carton of eggs, raising his eyebrows at Steve. 

“Just ‘cause I’m 93 doesn’t mean I need dentures,” he answers. 

“Yes please,” Steve says in response to the eggs.  “Then care to explain the teeth?”  Bucky stills as he rummages in the drawer below the oven for the frying pan.  His brow wrinkles and his eyes dart back and forth, a sure sign that he’s sifting through some bad memories and trying to pull out a specific one without dumping an avalanche of disturbing thoughts on the day. 

“Mine rotted.  I didn’t do anything to them for a couple years, and they had to be pulled.  Guess your ma was right,” he says, slamming the frying pan down onto the gas burner.  Steve thinks that’s all he’ll get, so he fusses with the coffee maker and takes two mugs off the rack. 

“Then they put these in.  I don’t know what they’re made out of, and I don’t know if that’s common or not.  But they’ve lasted a while, as long as I take care of them,” Bucky adds quietly as he’s cracking eggs into the pan and adding a splash of milk.  He scrambles them with the spatula and then turns the flame on.   

Steve brings him a mug of coffee and brushes his hand against the small of Bucky’s back as he leaves it by the stove. 

“Thanks for making breakfast,” Steve tells him. 

“It’s my turn,” Bucky mumbles without looking up from the pan. 

Steve flips through the New York Times that Tony has delivered to his floor every morning in a mixed gesture of kindness and snark, and he turns on the radio in a likely futile attempt to redirect Bucky’s attention. 

Bucky loves music, and he loves finding things that he’s never heard before.  They listen to everything around the apartment – country, rap, blues, rock ‘n roll, and top 40, and that’s not including when Bucky puts his headphones in and disappears onto the roof for hours at a time. 

But sometimes Steve gets the itch for Big Band, and if Bucky’s in the right mood, it’s like the lines between 2015 and 1940 blur, and the gaudy, patriotic decorations in the apartment fade away, and Bucky walks lighter on his feet like a swing dancer instead of a survivor. 

The Big Band station blares Glenn Miller and his orchestra, and Steve groans in satisfaction when he hears the hook to “In the Mood.”  He hums along, licking his thumb to turn the pages of the newspaper.  As he wrestles with the paper’s crease, he hears a faint sound from Bucky’s corner of the kitchen. 

At first he thinks that Bucky’s humming too, but his jaw drops when he realizes Bucky is _singing._   Bucky almost never sang because he thinks he doesn’t have the voice for it, and Steve hasn’t even heard him try since before the war.  But he focuses his hearing and picks up a few words here and there…and Bucky’s definitely singing the Andrews Sisters lyrics over the instrumental track. 

“ _So I said politely, darlin’ may I intrude?_

_He said, don’t keep me waiting while I’m in the mood._

_First I held him lightly and we started to dance,_

_Then I held him tightly, what a dreamy romance,_

_And I said, hey baby, it’s a quarter to three,_

_It’s a mess of moonlight won’t you share it with me,_

_Well he answered-_ ”

Bucky stops abruptly as he turns around, plates in hand, and sees Steve watching him.  Steve isn’t completely sure what emotions are showing on his face, but he probably looks too soft for breakfast.  He schools his expression as Bucky drops a plate in front of Steve and immediately starts to dig into his own eggs hungrily. 

“You know, the band played this song at one of Tony’s parties once, and no one knew what it was called.  Or who originally played it,” Steve comments. 

“Travesty,” Bucky scowls.  He meets Steve’s eye, and the energy of a shared opinion crackles between them. 

Steve picks up his fork and starts to eat his eggs.  Bucky’s never been a great cook, but the bulk of the domestic responsibilities would fall to him when Steve was sick, so the taste of the runny eggs makes Steve think of caring and being cared for.  It reminds Steve of Bucky draping cold cloths over his forehead and taking his temperature with his lips. 

He eats his eggs while they’re warm and enjoys the morning with Bucky.  As their mornings go, it’s a happy one, and he knows it won’t last. 

He saves it up and stores it away, knowing he’ll need its warmth at some point in the future. 

 

Steve and Bucky are eating at a diner on the border between Queens and Brooklyn when his phone beeps and buzzes with the message to _Assemble._   It’s not ideal timing; Steve has been working on coaxing Bucky back into Brooklyn for the better part of three weeks, and Bucky actually seems amenable to riding the subway further into the borough and walking around for a bit today.  He’s unimpressed with his burger and glaring at the diner’s other patrons when they raise their eyebrows at Captain America and the strange, sullen-looking man, but he’d agreed to to a walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

Instead Steve stands up and takes out his wallet, tossing twenty dollars on the table with a casualness that would have boggled his mind two years ago.  He ruefully takes a final bite out of his BLT and notices that Bucky’s already moving for the door. 

“You up for a mission?” Steve asks as he catches up to Bucky on the diner’s stoop.  Bucky’s already retracing his steps and heading for the closest subway platform, and Steve reads his anticipation in his pace.  They don’t know any details of the mission yet, or if Bucky will even be needed, but it’s always satisfying when he shows enthusiasm about something. 

“Hell yes,” Bucky tells him as they weave through strangers.  He pulls his sweatshirt tightly around his body, despite the clammy June temperature, probably as a second skin against the bodies brushing past them.  They descend the stairs and feed their MetroCards into the turnstile, and Bucky falls back and lets Steve lead the way onto the orange line car. 

The car is packed and they have to stand, so Steve directs Bucky to grab the support pole.  He stands behind Bucky and loosely holds onto his waist for balance.

“Can’t Stark just fly us?” Bucky complains with an edge to his voice.  The car rocks and shudders around them, shrieking and squealing as metal rubs against metal. 

“It won’t take us that long to get back,” Steve counters his irritation.  Bucky doesn’t seem to have anything innately against the sights or sounds of the subway, so it must be the press of people causing him to grit his teeth.

Steve looks around.  No one seems to have noticed them, or if they have, they’re not the type to record Steve on their cell phones.  He hates that, and he knows that Bucky is close to getting recognized as well.  A few more missions with the man crime writers have started referring to as ‘The one-armed crusader’ on their blogs and in their articles, and it will be all too easy to recognize Steve Rogers’s one-armed companion. 

Steve doesn’t know to prepare Bucky for that.  He hopes – no, he has more faith in Bucky than that.  He’s almost positive that Bucky is level enough not to attack any bystanders snapping their pictures for Instagram or any kids coming up to ask how he was recruited by the Avengers.

But Bucky will still hate it, and that’s one of the reasons Steve’s been suggesting so many day trips and walking tours lately.  They’ll probably hole up again when Bucky starts to get recognized, for how long he doesn’t know. 

He leans forward and rests his chin on Bucky’s good shoulder, letting the sweep of Bucky’s hair obscure his face.  Bucky’s hair is growing long again, and Steve doesn’t know if he’ll want to cut it or leave it this time. 

He smells clean, and his neck is always the softest part of him. 

“Ulterior motives in riding the subway?” Bucky asks quietly, his voice travelling a few inches to Steve’s ears alone. 

“No.  It really is the quickest way.  Stark can’t carry us both,” Steve says as he lifts his face apologetically.  Bucky lets go of the pole to reach behind him.  He gets his hand on the back of Steve’s head and yanks it back to his shoulder. 

Steve doesn’t move again, letting the swaying of the car push him against Bucky and then pull them apart over and over.  He can hear the music blaring from the headphones of the girl standing next to Bucky, and it’s slow and bluesy.  He catches some lyrics about the singer being a Brooklyn Baby. 

It almost feels like dancing. 

 

Bucky’s softness from the train disappears as soon as they get to Stark Tower.  Instead of going up to their floor, they take the elevator underground to the secure bunker where the team stores most of their gear and weaponry.  At its busiest, it has the atmosphere of an amped-up locker room with teammates changing into their uniforms and strapping guns and knives into the stitching.

Steve changes into his nomex and Kevlar uniform, clipping his comm-link over his ear and buckling on his utility belt while the comm-link syncs. 

“This is Steve; what’s our 20?” he asks as he laces up his red boots. 

“Conference room.  We’re covering intel before we go out,” Natasha answers.  Generally, if the situation is an emergency, JARVIS will text them a location and basic instructions so they can report individually.  Missions that require them to meet ahead of time and travel as a group are less immediate, but Steve still hurriedly grabs his cowl and shield. 

Bucky’s almost ready too, even though he only has the use of one arm to suit up.  He’s buttoning the straps on his black leather jacket and using his teeth to yank a glove onto his hand.  The jacket only has one sleeve, and his damaged shoulder is covered by a protective metal plate painted by Tony to match Steve’s shield. 

When Tony had shown him a series of uniform mock-ups from which to choose, he’d picked the one that looked most like the Winter Soldier’s uniform. 

It’s not really a problem in terms of exposure – there hadn’t been much usable information about Bucky in the Hydra data upload, and most of the footage from the attack on the bridge is blurry and shaky.  For all the public knows, the mysterious Winter Soldier alluded to in the Hydra files was captured or killed. 

It does worry Steve that Bucky had been immediately drawn to the aesthetic.  With the exception of a domino mask instead of the muzzle-like lower-face mask, he hasn’t made many changes to his Hydra uniform – and Steve knows he didn’t choose it. 

Bucky holsters his 356 Derringer, his TEC-38, and SIG-Sauer P226 at his thighs.  He turns, and Steve wordlessly picks up the Skorpio and slides it into the holster Bucky wears on his back. 

Bucky is the only member of their team to carry four guns, but he’s bemoaned it as a low number before.  He’s limited to hand-held guns, and even though he doesn’t say anything, Steve knows that he feels naked without the sniper rifle that fit perfectly into his hands long before Department X twisted him into their mercenary. 

“Team’s in the conference room,” Steve says as Bucky clips his own comm-link on.  Their steps fall into sync as they head for the elevator, leaving off their masks until the last possible moment. 

Natasha, Tony, Clint, and Thor are gathered in the conference room. 

“Rhodey and Sam are on their way,” Natasha greets them.  They sit down, and Natasha pushes a StarkTablet across the table to them. 

“Intel provided by Fury, Nicholas J.  June 7th, 2015, twelve hundred hours, eastern standard time,” the message starts when Steve hits ‘play.’  “AIM base located in Philadelphia.  Estimated 100-150 agents inside.  Guards, cameras, whole shebang.  Potentially linked to bridge collapse and resulting casualties.”  The Fury recording takes a break to mutter under his breath. 

“I’ve been hacking their communications,” he continues a moment later, “and they’re definitely a major AIM hub on the east coast – possibly _the_ major AIM hub.  I have enough evidence – Nat, Steve, call the team together.  You need an initial strike force to capture the leaders before they get warning and slip out all snake-like, and then you’ll send regular teams in to arrest the lackeys and shut down their shit.” 

The recording ends with coordinates, and Steve moves to the touch-screen that occupies the western wall.  He inputs in his password, which _isn’t_ stevenjames4eva no matter how much Tony teases and connives, and seconds later, he brings up their AIM threat list. 

“If Fury didn’t have names, then he doesn’t know who’s in there.  These are the thirty most wanted AIM scientists and engineers in our database who haven’t been arrested yet – Tony, download these so you can recognize their faces.  These are the people we want to sweep before they can run, as well as anyone else who appears to be in a position of authority,” Steve commands. 

“Will Stark let us know who the winners are?” Sam asks as he slips into the conference room in his Falcon gear. 

“Stark and Rhodey have facial recognition software in their helmets, so they’ll pass it along,” Steve assures him.  “But everyone else, here are some special faces to remember.”  He taps the screen three times, and red boxes appear around the five most dangerous at-large AIM agents. 

“Darren Long, explosions expert.  Manuel Fuentes, space weaponry project leader.  David Slobodan, former head of sciences in Latveria.  Victor Li, human subjects tester.  And Christine Mencken, former ranking Hydra scientist.  There’s a good chance that a few of these individuals will be in the AIM compound, and it’s a top priority to bring them in.”  He surveys the table as they scrutinize the pictures. 

“Alive,” he adds for Bucky’s benefit.  “So we can find out what they know.”  Bucky scowls but nods. 

“Rhodey’s twenty minutes out,” Tony tells them. 

“Then we leave in thirty.  Clint, get the Quinjet ready.  Bucky, pass the intel over to Sam,” Steve says.  He flicks his finger across the screen a few times and brings up blueprints for AIM compounds they’ve hit in the past. 

“Okay, so we know there are always similarities in how AIM arranges their labs…”

An hour later, Clint’s landing the stealth Quinjet on the roof of an office building in Philadelphia.  There’s an abandoned factory next door guarded by private security contractors with suspiciously advanced guns.  Looking through binoculars, it becomes clear that behind the smashed and graffitied windows, there’s another wall.  It’s a building inside the broken shell of another building. 

“Bucky, Sam, Natasha, Clint – north, south, east, and west entrances respectively.  Don’t let anyone in or out, but stay out of sight and try not to alert the guards to your presence until you have to.  Tony, Rhodey, Thor – let’s find the garage door.”  The team affirms and scatters, and Steve nods at Bucky before he grabs onto Tony and lets himself be carried off. 

Tony’s scanning systems find the tuck entrance almost a mile away in a dark, dirty corner of a parking garage.  A few men leaning up against the hood of a rusty car seem surprised to see people this far back, but Steve throws his shield and knocks two of them out cold before they can hit their panic buttons.  Tony stuns the other two with his repulsors, and a minute later, Thor forces open the vehicle door and they jog or fly down the long, ill-lit concrete corridor.   

There are more guards at the other side.  Rhodey takes them out while Steve peers out into the putrid yellow hallways.  AIM’s always had the fallacy of labeling everything, likely because they’re so big on data and directions.  So it’s easy for Steve and Tony to follow the arrow towards the administrative labs while Rhodey and Thor head for the living quarters. 

“Had to disable the camera on my entrance.  Group tried to walk out on foot – I stopped them,” Natasha says over the comm-link.  Steve presses a button to make the comm-link click in acknowledgement without having to verbally say anything.  Steve and Tony duck down below a series of windows looking into laboratories with multi-story metal machines and keep moving for the heart of the facility. 

“Spotted in living quarters.  Holding nine agents at gunpoint and tying their hands,” Rhodey is the next to speak.  Steve clicks again. 

Two beehive-helmeted agents spot him and Tony as they round the botanical labs.  Steve kicks them both unconscious and removes their helmets to make sure they aren’t on the list.  It’s unlikely – the AIM project leaders and upper-level coordinators are usually the ones in normal lab coats while their minions work their way up the ladder in the garishly yellow uniforms, identities less established and therefore masked. 

“Had to take out my camera, too.  Don’t think they saw me,” Clint is the next to comment.  Again, Steve clicks. 

Finally, Steve and Tony make it to the guarded labs.  They handle the guards and kick the doors down, stepping in and watching dozens of startled gazes land on them.

“They know we’re here,” he finally says audibly.  He can feel a sigh of relief over the communication system as his people can finally stop sneaking and start fighting openly.  He brings his shield up to block a round of gunfire and turns his head to the side to meet the angry eyes of the female scientist from their Most Wanted briefing. 

“I was really hoping you’d be here.  I still have a bone to pick with Hydra,” he calls to her callously.  She awkwardly fumbles for a pistol and tries to shoot him, but he’s already weaving toward her and forcing the weapon from her hands. 

He twists her arms behind her back and cuffs her, pushing her forward in front of him to stop the other agents whom Tony hasn’t dealt with yet from trying to attack him. 

“Stay,” he tells her, cuffing her to a heavy, metal worktable.  She spits at him, and he grabs her shoulder hard enough to hurt but not to permanently damage.    

“Who else from Hydra came over to AIM?” he asks.  Predictably, instead of answering him, she starts writhing and chanting. 

“Cut off one head,” she starts.  

“I’m not sure your new colleagues really embrace that motto,” he interrupts.  He lets go and turns to help Tony move into the next lab. 

“We have three from the list so far, including one of the big fish,” Tony brags. 

“Five from the list so far, and we have a big fish too.  Victor Li,” Rhodey responds.  Tony swears at him and redoubles his efforts. 

In the end, between the most elaborate labs and the nicer living quarters, they round up eighteen people from the list, including Li and Mencken.  They split them up and march them out Bucky’s exit while he covers them from above.  Dr. Mencken is one of the scientists that Steve is herding, and he sees her look up as they leave the compound and head for the Quinjet.  She gasps, and her bravado disappears.  Steve follows her line of sight up to Bucky where he’s standing on a windowsill three stories up, aiming the Sig-Sauer and smirking down at the new prisoners. 

“All AIM scum sit down on the floor.  It won’t be that bumpy of a ride,” Clint orders.  They herd the prisoners inside and stagger themselves to guard them. 

“Clint, take off,” Steve orders.  Then he reconfigures his comm-link and sets it up to call SHIELD. 

“Hill, it’s Rogers.  We’re out with the leaders – move in and turn the place over,” he orders. 

“Copy that,” she responds.  Her tone is clipped, but professional.  They still haven’t moved past the way he outmaneuvered her to get Bucky away from SHIELD without subjecting him to a mind scan. 

His eyes catch on Bucky for his customary post-mission assessment to make sure Bucky hasn’t been injured, and he notices that Mencken is sitting on the floor only a foot away from Bucky.  He’s scanning the prisoners and not paying specific attention to any of them, but her fear of Bucky is radiating off of her. 

She’s former Hydra, so she knows who he is.  And she’s terrified. 

Clint flies them to the mid-level security SHIELD prison on Long Island.  It’s Steve, Bucky, and Thor’s turn to stay behind and provide extra protection while their agents process the prisoners, and Steve knows they’ll probably be there until morning.  He sends Thor to get them some food while he and Bucky it in front of a panel of computer monitors and flick between camera views.  They pull their masks and gloves off, and Steve sets down his shield. 

This is the unglamorous side of being an Avenger.  For all of the shoot-outs, the supernaturalism, and the martial arts battles that get the blood pumping, there are moments of playing watchdog and just waiting for something to happen.  Bucky closes his eyes for a moment as they settle in to their chairs, and he looks around when he opens them. 

“So how long are we here for?” he asks, annoyed. 

“Until they’ve all been processed and put in their cells.  We step in if any of them get violent.  But we scanned them for weapons in the jet – these people are dangerous with their computers and their beakers, but they’re pretty harmless in orange jumpsuits.  It’s more of a formality.”  Bucky squints at the screens, and his frown deepens when the screen shows Mencken being escorted to the women’s side of the prison. 

“I know her,” he says. 

“Former Hydra.  A lot of them folded into AIM or RAID or those organizations.  She’s obviously important enough that she moved up through the ranks pretty quickly.  What do you know about her?” 

Bucky grits his teeth and doesn’t say anything.  His eyes dart nervously, and Steve frowns. 

“The Hydra data indicated that she was a project leader for a time, but she wasn’t mentioned in any of the Winter Soldier information.  Was she, um.  On your project?” Steve asks.  Bucky bites his lip and looks furious.

“No.  But she was important.  I saw her sometimes,” is all that he’ll say. 

Thor comes back with pizza, and Bruce joins them later.  Bruce has always felt unnecessary guilt over his limits with the team – the Hulk is great for smashing robots or monsters, but he doesn’t go on the human missions like this one.  He’s too blunt of a weapon, and he can’t gently or discriminately capture criminals and villains like today’s mission called for.  While Bucky can be chided into using non-lethal force, the Hulk never can. 

“I was listening on the comm-link.  Sounds like everything went smoothly,” Bruce says as he walks into the monitoring room.  He takes a slice of lukewarm pizza and shakes hands with the three of them in greeting. 

“Want to sweep with me?” Steve asks him a few minutes into their conversation about the facility and the updates that Maria’s been sending them for the last several hours.  Apparently her people arrested an additional 105 agents and brought them to the lowest-security SHIELD prison in Buffalo.  Bruce blinks in confusion but accepts his offer.  They leave Thor and Bucky talking about some of the more dramatic battles Thor’s lived through on other worlds, and Bucky looks skeptical but interested. 

“Any reason in particular you requested my company when I didn’t even go on the mission?” Bruce asks as they move through the cells and scan their SHIELD IDs at every door. 

“Because Thor has no sense of discretion,” Steve answers as he keeps them moving in a specific direction. 

“And Bucky?” Bruce asks.  Steve hesitates, but he’s always been able to trust Bruce. 

“It’s about Bucky,” he admits.  This idea has been brewing ever since Bucky identified the Hydra scientist on the monitors.  Bruce doesn’t respond to him, just lets the silence linger between them until Steve’s ready to spill. 

“Bucky identified one of the prisoners, Dr. Christine Mencken, as a former Hydra scientist who was important enough to have access to him without being part of the team of scientists assigned to him,” Steve says, keeping the emotions out of his voice as much as he can.  He needs to be objective about this, and thinking about scientists swarming around Bucky, doing things to his mind and treating him like an animal, is the farthest from objective he can get. 

“She was terrified of him.  But he was…upset when he figured out who she was.  So I think there’s a chance she might know things about him that Bucky’s still hiding from me,” he admits quietly. 

“He’s hiding things from you,” Bruce repeats.  There’s no judgment in his tone, but Steve rushes to defend Bucky anyway. 

“Hiding things to protect me.  He’s never wanted me to know the torture and the dehumanization they put him through – not even the first time it happened with Zola.  But I need to know,” Steve emphasizes.  “Bruce, he has so many tics and symptoms.  It’s nothing that affects him being on our team, but I live with him, and I see them, and I worry constantly,” he confesses.  It’s the first time he’s told anyone besides Sam about his misgivings, and it’s nerve-wracking.  But he somehow feels better just saying it out loud.  Even he and Sam communicate about Bucky in looks and gestures these days, because there’s nothing new to say.  

“Well,” Bruce says after thinking for a minute.  “I suppose it can’t hurt to find out if she knows anything.  I’m up for a bit of investigative work if you are.”  Steve’s smile is strained.  He’s been investigating for months without any success. 

The women’s part of the prison looks the same as the men’s, but it’s not as loud.  Their footsteps echo over the concrete flooring as they head for Mencken’s cell, and several curious eyes follow them down the passage ways.  A few bolder inmates curse or harass them, and Bruce is blushing by the time they make it to Mencken’s cell. 

She’s dozing on her thin mattress, and Steve kicks forcefully at the bars to wake her up.  The resulting clang startles her awake, but she smirks when she sees him.  All traces of fear are gone from her face as she slips out of bed and moves to stand in front of the bars, her orange clothing still creased from the packaging and her bun as rigid as it had been when she was giving orders and surveying the data output from her computers this morning. 

“You do-gooder son of a bitch,” she sneers at Steve.  “You think these bars can hold me?” 

“I think you’re just a power-tripping human, and this facility was built for much more than humans.  You may be a murderer, but you had to use your toys to do it,” Steve shrugs at her.  She scowls, the muscle below her eye twitching in rage. 

“What do you want?” she asks.  Steve hesitates, deciding on his approach.  She doesn’t seem like the type to volunteer information when he asks for it. 

“I noticed that you were terrified of my colleague.  He doesn’t really have a title yet, so we just call him Barnes,” Steve says.  He watches her eyes for a flicker of recognition at the name – it’s unclear if modern Hydra ever knew who their forbearers had broken and shaped into the Winter Soldier. 

Her grin is dark and devious.  She snorts at him. 

“You know I know who _that_ is.  And I wasn’t your garden variety Hydra agent – I actually know.  I was higher than that bullshit about freezers and brainwashing.” 

Steve’s pulse thrums.  He has no idea what she means by that, but it feels crucial. 

“I might be able to get you a lesser sentence if you cooperate.  I need to know if he’s too compromised for my team,” he tells her.  He doesn’t feel bad about lying in regards to her sentence, because he knows she won’t tell him the truth directly. 

“The asset as an Avenger is laughable,” she tells him.  Her mouth curves upward, and her eyes betray her delight.  “I certainly wouldn’t want to stand in the way of that.” 

Steve steps forward and schools his features.  He has to bait her to find out more about…about _the asset_ she referred to Bucky as.

“It’s not laughable,” he growls.  She purses her lips to keep a chuckle at bay.  “He’s an American war hero, and he belongs fighting at my side.”

“It’s bitten its master’s hand before,” she tells him, pushing her face as close to the bars as she can get it without letting their metal touch her skin.  They’re only a few inches apart, and she can probably smell the pizza on his breath.    “You have no clue what you’re dealing with, boy.  There were rooms upon rooms of files that you’ll never see.  And you’re so puppy-dog-loyal, that you won’t realize how uncontrollable it is, until it’s too late.” 

“He is not an _it_ ,” Steve says darkly.  She playfully snaps at his nose, then draws back from the bars. 

“Definitely keep it on the roster.  I can’t wait to hear how this goes.”  She returns to her bed and settles back in. 

“Best of luck destroying yourself from the inside out,” she calls to them as Bruce touches his shoulder and motions to leave with a jerk of his chin.  Steve lets Bruce lead him away, heart pounding in his temple and his thoughts flying past him too quickly to grab and examine. 

She knows something, and she’s not telling.  He debates the relative merits of bringing Natasha into the interrogation.  Mencken knows whatever it is that Bucky doesn’t want him to know, and she hinted at it. 

She called him the asset – is that what Hydra called him?  What about the name, Yasha, that Bucky threw out the first time he met Natasha? 

She said there wasn’t a freezer – is that cryofreeze?  Was Bucky never frozen?  His mind flicks to the picture from the file Natasha got him, and he remembers her saying that the photo was doctored.  Did Hydra suspend him somehow without freezing him?  Did they purposefully lie about the cryofreeze?  God, has Bucky been awake this whole time? 

She said he wasn’t brainwashed – Steve doesn’t even know what to do with that.  Of course Bucky was brainwashed – how else could he have killed remorselessly for so long?  Steve’s stomach churns.  They’ve been working off the brainwashing theory for so long, but if it’s not true, they’ll be back to square one and looking for a more sinister explanation. 

And she said Bucky was uncontrollable.  She said he’d destroy them from the inside out. 

Bruce clears his throat. 

“So, we learned some new information,” he starts.  He’s trying to sound excited, but Steve’s too confused to hear it. 

“She’s wrong.  He’s not going to turn on me or on any of us,” he insists.  Bruce holds up a hand, and Steve realizes how angry he’s worked himself up to sounding. 

“I don’t think she’s right.  She talked about him like a creature, and I know that’s not him.  I don’t know him that well, but I know he’s very much a human being,” Bruce assures him.  Steve’s shoulders sag, and he has to stop and lean against a wall to center himself.  Bruce kindly waits with him. 

“What if she is right?” he finally whispers.  It’s a completely turnaround from his previous statement, and Bruce lifts an eyebrow.  It’s not really how Steve feels, but now that the anger has drained out of him, he’s suddenly so scared. 

“Why would you think that?” 

“I don’t know,” Steve moans quietly.  He rubs his forehead and pushes several errant pieces of hair back into place. 

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Bruce suggests kindly.  He stuffs his hands into his pockets and awkwardly rocks on the balls of his feet. 

Steve takes him up on it, if for no other reason than he needs to talk out all the facts again to reassure himself. 

They’re winding back to the monitoring room while Steve describes Bucky’s moods, and how they’re so different but so consistent within themselves.  It’s not the most glaring information about Bucky in light of Menken’s allegations, but it feels important to Steve.  He’s always had this catch in his brain about Bucky’s moods, like they’re somehow the explanation to all of the secrets shrouding Bucky’s past from him. 

“So he’s got the angry, cold killer mood; the relatively calm and, not happy, but attentive and curious and content, that mood; and then he’s got a third mood that’s the most broken and depressed, but he also does the most familiar things in that mood.  Like, gestures and routines.  That’s the most ambiguous mood; the first two are much more clear-cut.”  Bruce nods thoughtfully as Steve pushes open the door, expecting to see Bucky and Thor.  To his surprise, Thor is the only one in the room.  There’s a pizza crust dangling from his mouth, and he looks up from his phone guiltily.  Steve sees the colorful background of Candy Crush before he slips it into his pocket. 

“I am watching the monitors,” Thor assures them.  Steve looks around, but Bucky isn’t anywhere in the room. 

“Where’s Bucky?” he asks, already disposed to be on-edge about him. 

“He went to go ask you something,” Thor says like it’s obvious. 

“When was this?” Bruce asks nervously.  Thor looks at the time on the monitors. 

“Perhaps thirty minutes ago.”

Steve knows they didn’t see Bucky in the passages, and he moves forward to scan the screens for him.  It’s possible that he’s lost.  That’s the best explanation – but Steve feels the shadow of doubt waver over him again, and he has the feeling that this doesn’t have a good explanation at all. 

“Here,” Bruce says, tapping his finger against a monitor.  Steve pushes forward and expands the screen. 

Bucky’s standing in front of Mencken’s cell.  He’s leaning against the bars, and Steve can see his mouth moving, but there’s no sound on the cameras.  It’s why he felt confident enough to speak about the situation to Bruce in the first place. 

“What the hell’s he doing?” Steve asks the other Avengers in the room.  They have no more insight than he does. 

Whatever Bucky’s saying to Mencken, she crawls out of bed and wedges herself into the corner of her cell, putting as much distance between them as she can.  She’s crying, Steve realizes, and the look of abject terror is back on her face.  Only it’s amplified, now that Bucky’s sought her out. 

Steve runs out of the room, knowing that he’s probably causing alarm in the SHIELD guards, but he doesn’t care.  His skin crawls with the knowledge that something’s wrong – this is the woman who knows what evil happened to Bucky, and now Bucky is standing in front of her cell and she’s breaking down.  She’s a strong, hard woman – Steve saw that for himself.  But she’s crying and getting as far away as she possibly can. 

He speeds up. 

He bursts into the women’s wing and runs past the angry women who scream questions and lewd suggestions at him.  He nearly breaks down the last door between him and Bucky, and he skids to a stop feet away from Mencken’s cell.  Bucky’s still standing at the bars, his fingers wound casually though them, and Mencken is still in the corner. 

He walks the last few steps, and Bucky turns to him. 

“Hey,” Bucky greets him blandly.  Steve gets a hand on Bucky’s side, because he needs to, and looks into the cell.

Mencken is still in the corner, but she’s shaking and frothing at the mouth.  The bottom drops out of Steve’s stomach. 

They don’t check for Cyanide teeth anymore.  None of the modern Hydra agents they’ve captured, lackey or leader, has crunched one of those capsules. 

He turns to Bucky, who’s looking at him warily but relaxed. 

“How did she get that?” he asks.  His voice sounds like he’s speaking from underwater. 

“She had it.  Some of Hydra were into that old school stuff,” Bucky tells him calmly. 

Steve isn’t sure whether or not he believes him. 

Bucky unwinds his fingers from the bars and reaches for Steve.  He laces their fingers together.

“I really didn’t kill her.  You can check the cameras.  But she’s not a loss,” he promises. 

Steve looks at Mencken as she slumps over, and after a moment, he swipes his ID on the scanner by her cell and presses the intercom button. 

“This is Captain Rogers.  One of the prisoners, Christine Mencken in WD03, just committed suicide.  Looks like she had a cyanide capsule in her dental work.”  He releases the button and lets Bucky pull him away from the cell.

“She knew something about you,” he starts, unsure how he wants to continue.  Bucky nods. 

“I didn’t want it to come from her,” he says softly.  It’s as good as an admission that, if he didn’t give her the capsule, he talked her into taking it.  Threatened her?  Terrified her? 

“She works with electricity.  One time, they let her see how many volts of electricity it would take before I lost control of my bowels.  Just for fun – there’s no way that possibly had application for anyone else,” Bucky tells him bitterly. 

And Steve swallows back some of his horror.  He grips Bucky’s fingers tighter at the casual admission of just one of many ways Hydra hurt him and violated him.  He’s upset that Bucky contributed to the death of someone with firsthand knowledge about him, but it’s hard to blame Bucky for hating Hydra and wanting to wipe them out in every way possible.

 

Almost a week later, Steve’s mostly forgiven but not forgotten.  Bruce is the only one who knows what Bucky did, because even Thor hasn’t pieced it together.  Steve notices Bruce watching Bucky closely at their next team dinner and movie night, but at least Bruce is being subtle.  Steve feels like he’s too taught with anxiety and theories to act subtle anymore. 

They eat sushi for dinner, which Bucky tries and loves, and watch what Tony calls ‘The New Batman’ series, although Steve remembers reading about The Bat-man in 1939, and it all feels very new to him. 

There’s the normal debate over dinner concerning whether superheroes should watch superhero movies. 

“They’re part of our heritage,” Tony insists. 

“They’re fictional.  We’re not.  It’s a fake world with fake threats.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t watch it, because it’s fuckin’ Nolan, man, but don’t compare it to what we do,” Clint argues. 

“Watching the deeds of fictional warriors doesn’t compare to real battles, but we can find inspiration in their courage and their teamwork,” Thor says. 

“Or we’ll fuck up our strategies because someone wants to try something they saw in a Justice League cartoon,” is Natasha’s contribution. 

“That was one time,” Tony insists, deadly serious.  Steve watches Bucky’s eyes crinkle as he smiles at the dramatic debate and grabs another piece of California roll between the chopsticks he’s become more adept at from living in the tower and eating copious take-out. 

Steve gets up to refill his water glass, and Bruce meets him in Tony’s kitchen. 

“Is he in the happier mood?” Bruce asks, fussing with a plant on the island to make it look like he’s not in the kitchen specifically to talk to Steve. 

“Yeah, has been for a few hours,” Steve replies.  Bucky is in his happier mood – he willingly tried the strange food that it took Steve almost a year to work up to, and he’s still eating and listening to the others contentedly.  He never chimes in unless he’s asked a direct question, but that’s normal. 

Pepper brushes by them to grab a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator, and they smile innocently at her.  Steve feels like he’s sneaking something, even though they’ve barely discussed anything.  He grabs some glasses for Pepper and carries them back out to the living area.  Bruce follows nearly five minutes later, which feels like overkill for Steve, but he appreciates it nonetheless. 

“Wine, Steve?  Bucky?” Pepper asks as she passes out glasses.  Steve takes a glass just because Bucky’s usually more inclined to try things if he does it first, and sure enough, Bucky nods his head. 

“Tony?” Pepper asks.  “It’s a Riesling.” 

“Ick.  No.  German wine defeats the purpose,” Tony says with his mouth full of fish and wasabi. 

“Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Kabinett is delicious,” Pepper says with perfect inflection.  Steve looks at her, surprised.  There’s some part of him that will always have a kneejerk reaction to hearing German, even though he knows how long ago his war was for this world. 

“Three years in college,” Pepper tells him evenly, shrugging and smiling at his start.  “I wasn’t really a je m’appelle girl.” 

“Who the fuck speaks German?” Tony wonders aloud.  “I’ve been to Germany.  Everyone there speaks English better than we do.” 

“I can speak German,” Bucky says quietly.  He sounds unsure but proud of himself, and most eyes in the room swivel to look at him. 

“Ummm,” Clint says audibly.  “I thought you spoke Russian.  Weren’t you kept in Russia?”  Bucky’s sitting in front of Steve on the floor, so Steve rests a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and slides his fingers through the thin strands at his hairline. 

“I was.  There was a German guy there who taught me,” Bucky says.  He falters at the end of his sentence, like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to say that.  He puts his wine glass down, and Steve sees his fingers twist and shift nervously on the carpet at his right.  He leaves up his pinkie, index, and middle fingers, tucking his ring finger and thumb against the floor.  It leaves up three fingers with a gap between them, and it’s a strange, forced hand position. 

“Es ist eine schön zu sprechende Sprache," Pepper says helpfully.  Her wine glass is already nearly half-empty, which probably comes with the territory of being with Tony.   Steve hears Bucky’s jaw pop as he opens and shuts his mouth a few times.  He’s heard Bucky mutter _danke_ in his exhausted state before, but never anything since then. He wrote it down, but he hasn’t thought about it in a long time. It’s one more thing that doesn’t fit into what he knows about Bucky – because Clint is right, Bucky told SHIELD that he was kept in Russia until he was moved to the United States.  

“Kann schon sein.  Wo haben Sie es gelernt?” Bucky replies.  

“Wie ich schon sagte, ich habe es in der Schule gelernt," Pepper says.  Her smile doesn’t lessen, but a tiny wrinkle appears on her forehead. 

“Ich habe es im Krieg gelernt," Bucky tells her.  The wrinkle deepens. 

“Ich dachte du hast gesagt, dass du es von einem Mann im Gefängnis gelernt hast?"                                     

“Das hat mir geholfen zu üben,”" Bucky replies.  Steve has no idea what he’s saying, but he recognizes Bucky’s cornered scowl. 

“Well, I’m feeling left out,” Tony interrupts.  “Let’s start this movie.”  Thor and Clint chime in to agree, and JARVIS starts the film. 

The next time Pepper goes to the kitchen to grab a new bottle of wine, Steve is the one to follow her in with questions. 

“Hey,” he greets her.  She looks over her shoulder where she’s kneeling on the counter in her stockings in an effort to reach the top cupboard.  “Need help?”

“I’m resourceful,” she tells him with a grin. 

“Listen, I’m kind of worried about Bucky lately,” he admits without preamble. 

“Oh?” is her response.  She genuinely sounds curious and concerned, because she’s a lovely person. 

“You seemed a little worried about what he was saying in German.  Are you able to tell me what you said?” Steve asks.  “I heard war, and prison.  But I don’t know the conversational structure, just nouns.” 

“I wasn’t worried, per say.  Just a little confused.  He asked me where I learned German, and I repeated that I learned it in school.  Then he said he learned it in the war, so I told him that I thought he said he learned it from a man in prison.  He said the man in prison just helped him practice.  So he backtracked a few times.”

Steve nods.  It fits into what he knows about Bucky.  He thanks her and helps her down from the counter, and she giggles with flushed cheeks when he carries her bridal-style to the threshold between the kitchen and living room, wine bottle clutched securely in her hands. 

“Are you making a move on Pepper?” Tony calls, clearly joking.  Bucky whips his head to look at them, and Tony notices.  “For shame.  Bucky and I are right here.” 

“We’re,” Steve starts, and then he stops because everyone is looking at him.  Most of his friends (not all of them) have been respectful of his feelings for Bucky and haven’t said anything, but they’re all clearly curious enough.  Clowns are robbing a bank on screen, but every eye is turned towards Steve, waiting for him to either confirm or deny that Bucky is to him what Pepper is to Tony.  Tony looks smugly pleased with himself for engineering the situation, and Bucky looks like he’s as fascinated by the answer as the rest of them.  Except the stakes are higher for him, and his eyes are wide.  Steve knows he’s going to bite his lip, making the pink flesh turn white, before he does it. 

The answer isn’t straightforward.  They’re not together, but they’re not with anyone else.  They probably never will be with anyone else.  They might be trapped in this dance for the rest of their extended lives, but by now, Steve is fairly certain that he’s it for Bucky.  And Bucky has always been it for him.  Even if they never progress to more than light, friendly touches, he can’t see anyone else in the picture for either of them. 

The jealousy still roars up in his belly when Natasha and Bucky spar like they’re about to fuck on the mat, but Bucky is always extra affectionate with him afterwards.  Bucky knows that he’s bothered by the Natasha thing, as much as he’d like not to be, and he doesn’t flirt with her or treat her like anything other than a teammate.  Even in his most genial mood. 

But none of that means they’re together.  But he also doesn’t want to openly reject Bucky in front of their friends. 

He sits back down and pulls Bucky to lean against his knees.  Bucky tilts his head back, still questioning, and Steve wipes away a smudge of ginger from Bucky’s mouth with his thumb.  It’s an intimate gesture, and the team probably reads his answer in it.  At least, they go back to watching the heist on film. 

Except his answer isn’t blunt enough for Tony.

“What’s the sex like with one arm, because I actually started thinking about this yesterday,” Tony says, oblivious to the tone of the room. 

“Tony!” Steve practically shrieks.  Bucky flinches against his legs.  “You can’t ask questions like that!”  The team’s eyes are back on them.  Apparently the Joker is responsible for the bank heist on the TV. 

“So I know your shoulder socket is pretty much kaput – hey, look, I know German too – but I’ve kind of been playing around with the idea of prosthetics for you for a while.  And I came up with a few ideas that might be able to rebuild the socket or do away with the need for it altogether.” 

Steve gapes at Tony.  He can’t keep up. 

“Sex aside, which I’m sure is a top concern, there’s Avenging to consider.  You’re a fucking badass with one arm, but with two, you could carry rifles and bazookas and all the good shit you were probably used to before.  But I figured I’d check with you to see if you’re about that before I actually start to play with schematics.” 

“How sensitive of you,” Natasha says wryly.  She turns to Bucky.  “Yes, it’s completely your call.  No one here will ever put anything in you that you don’t explicitly give permission for again.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, and Steve can feel him being overwhelmed through the tense muscles in his back.   He’s still probably reacting to Tony’s sex comment, and Steve doesn’t know if he should address that before moving on, or just leave it.  Even if they were having sex, which they definitely aren’t, they’re too practiced in hiding it from others.  It’s beyond strange for Tony to just assume that they, two men, are sleeping together like it’s _no big deal_ , and oh, do you want another cybernetic arm?

“Uh.  I don’t mind only having the one arm,” Bucky says.  Steve suddenly wonders if he’s going to turn it down just to avoid inconveniencing anyone, because he doesn’t understand that for Tony, building something for a friend will never be an inconvenience.  Steve completely agrees with Natasha, but if Bucky is interested in getting a new arm, then he wants him to be able to. 

“You’re left-handed,” he points out, running his fingers over the bumps and seams on Bucky’s ruined shoulder.  He’s never really thought about it before, but he’s not immediately opposed just because Tony is inconsiderate.  

“I adapt,” Bucky says tonelessly.  Tony fidgets, waiting for his answer.  “The last one hurt a lot.  It was awful to have it put in.  But then I didn’t mind so much,” Bucky continues.  He sounds wary and conflicted. 

“I can knock you out with more of that super soldier anesthesia I made,” Tony tells him.  He’s almost at the edge of his seat in his eagerness, and Bucky notices. 

“No.  It was too much, and I don’t want to go through that again or put anyone else through it.  I’ll tell you if I change my mind.”  Tony nods, disappointed, and Bucky shrinks back against Steve’s legs again. 

Steve notices Bruce peering at Bucky, and he nods silently.  This is a different mood – somewhere around the German, the chemicals in Bucky’s brain shifted. 

Bruce looks down and to his left, a clear sign that his brain is working a mile a minute. 

Steve traces the shell of Bucky’s ear with his finger. 

 

Another week passes.  It’s hot, and Bucky gets a sunburn from napping on the balcony.  It deepens to light tan, and Steve never realized how sallow he looked until it’s gone.  He insists that they spend more time on the roof after that, and he invites the others up to join them. 

“Literally did not know this was up here,” Tony comments.  But he doesn’t pressure Bucky about the arm, and that’s incredibly tactful for him. 

Several Avengers are sprawled over the outdoor furniture, drinking margaritas from a pitcher that Clint brought up, and they’re telling stories from their childhoods.  All of them have dark patches lying over some memories from their childhoods – Tony’s parents ignored him, Natasha was forced into the Widow program, Clint ran away and joined the circus, Bruce’s dad was abusive, Thor’s memories are overlaid with the knowledge that his brother is a genocidal killer, and Steve and Bucky grew up poor and Irish in the 1920s – but under the sun, with friends and cold drinks, nothing really seems that bad. 

When all of their phones beep in unison, they groan. 

“Get Spiderman to do it,” Tony requests sleepily. 

“Avengers, Boston is currently being attacked by Doombots.  Police scanner information reports suspicions that they are attempting to pillage and rob MIT of some very expensive computer ware,” JARVIS tells them. 

Tony sits up.  “Not my fucking alma mater,” he declares. 

Fifteen minutes later, they’re all in the Quinjet and heading for Boston.  The other auxiliary members have been notified, but they don’t have time to wait.  Steve briefs the team on the flight. 

“Doombots are entirely robotic, but capable of human-like problem-solving.  They should be treated like intelligent beings, however, there’s nothing to kill.  So no need to hold back,” he informs them.  Bucky looks delighted at the news as he checks his side holster. 

“JARVIS, how many Doombots are we dealing with?” Steve asks. 

“I’m picking up twenty.  They are spread out in four different clusters of five each.” 

“Okay, teams.  Bruce, Nat – you’re together,” he directs, because Natasha’s the best at making firm suggestions to the Hulk.  “Clint, Bucky – you’re together.  Tony, Thor, you two are working on your own – you each have one cluster.  I’ll be a floater-slash-civilian rescue.  Get on the comm-link and tell me immediately if you need me to come to you.” 

Clint lowers the plane on a brick courtyard, but Tony and Thor take flight before the plane sets down.  Steve salutes his team and then jumps out after them, hitting the ground with a roll and sprinting towards the closest destroyed building to check for civilians. 

His comm-link blurs static in his ear, and he hears several clicks.  It’s the sound it usually makes when they speak individually to each other.  They don’t have much use for it, because in battle, there’s not much he has to say that he doesn’t want other teammates to hear. 

But he hears Bruce’s voice as he runs, and wariness settles over him as he jumps up a flight of stairs and runs down the hall, calling for anyone trapped to make noise.

“Steve, I need to talk to you after the fight.  As soon as possible.”

“Tell me now, or it will distract me,” Steve orders over the private line. 

“This will distract you more, and we need to focus.  Just…we need to talk.”  The line clicks several more times, and the private line is off. 

“Help, we’re in here!” someone screams.  Steve has to put it out of mind and break down the door – it won’t help these people any if he’s thinking about Bruce and Bucky the whole time.  Because what would it be about besides Bucky that Bruce would want to keep secret?

The battle, which rages all over campus, is radically different than their last battle.  Then they were cuffing AIM agents, but now they shoot and smash the Doombots like they’ve been itching to do some damage like this for a while – and maybe they have been.  Bucky takes to the fight like a fish to water, and he, Clint, and Nat start to compete hit for hit. 

They also had to use stealth on their last mission, but they can be as loud and as brutal as they want now.  Steve hears gunfire and explosions on loop through his comm-link, and it’s the perfect backdrop to the sound of the Doombots’ metal sheering off and weapons clanging against them. 

Steve will take any mission Fury sends his way, but the Avengers are a specific breed of people.  They’d rather fight openly, save openly, and see their wreckage lying at their feet than sneak into a secret facility and arrest disgusting, evil people who ultimately can’t do more than spit at them.  Maybe that’s messed up, but that’s who they are.  That’s what unites them as a team – the fact that this is their element. 

Steve’s so high on the fight that he doesn’t notice that the Doombot behind him isn’t completely down for the count.  It can still move its arm, and Thor calls out, “Steve!” over the comm-link a second before it pulls the trigger on a headshot. 

Steve hears something heavy, but not metallic, hit the ground behind him.  He turns and flings his shield, and it connects with the Doombot’s arm, forcing the joint back and jamming it in the robotic torso.  He draws his gun and shoots it through the eye, then turns to see Bucky climbing to his feet a few yards away.  His hair and uniform are dusted with the layer of brick debris on the ground from the Doombots’ guns, but he looks alright.  Then Steve sees the shine of blood against the dark fabric across his stomach. 

“What just happened?” Steve asks the team, because doesn’t expect Bucky to tell him.  He’s already arranged his features into nonchalance as he strides away, scowling. 

“Barnes just took a bullet for you,” Tony reports, sounding a bit awed. 

“Bucky!” Steve barks.  “Get back to the Quinjet, now!”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Bucky’s voice reassures him over the comm-link.  “Gonna take care of this first.”  From the corner of his eye, Steve sees him reengage. 

The rest of the battle is a blur.  Steve fights even more efficiently than usual.  He’s over the enjoyment he was taking in the battle earlier, and he just wants to wrap this up and get his hands on Bucky to make sure he’s okay.  A little, niggling voice in the back of his head reminds him that Bruce also has something to tell him about Bucky, but he pushes that aside.  Whatever Bruce thinks, it’s not reason enough to worry about Bucky as his bullet wound is. 

And whatever Bruce has to tell him, and it will probably be bad, won’t make him doubt Bucky.  He’s done with doubting Bucky – he’s the same man who will run to put himself between Steve and death or even injury, and while Steve isn’t particularly happy to inspire that kind of stupid loyalty in Bucky, it’s there.  It’s always been there, on the playground, in war, in the Battle of Washington, and now it’s still vibrant and burning deep inside Bucky’s twisted psyche. 

He trusts.  He will trust.  No matter what Bruce has to tell him. 

“What the hell is wrong with you??” he screams at Bucky when they’re back on the jet.  His harsh words belie how soft and humbled he feels inside, but he can’t let Bucky think that it’s just okay for him to go around, throwing himself in front of bullets for Steve.  Even with his superior abilities and healing, Steve doesn’t want to see any more of Bucky’s blood. 

“You’re welcome,” Bucky sneers.  The other Avengers look at them nervously as Steve shouts at Bucky while pulling back the straps on his jacket and pushing his shirts aside to see the wound. 

“Is there an exit wound?” Steve asks roughly. 

“Nope,” Bucky says, popping the ‘p’ noise.  Steve grabs his face and yells at him about how much of an idiot he is while Tony and Natasha push Bucky’s body against a reclining seat.  Tony finds the bullet, and Natasha pulls it out with an elongated pair of tweezers from the souped-up first aid kit in the Quinjet.  Somewhere in there, Steve kisses Bucky at least twice, and Bucky lets him, though he looks confused by what’s going on around him.  

Steve insists that Bucky go immediately to a hospital, and Tony calls Pepper to the ER with a briefcase of the lilac-colored anesthetic he invented. 

“You’re overreacting.  It’s a little kidney damage,” Bucky insists.  It’s the last thing he says before the drug knocks him out, and the doctors ask the roughed-up, dirty Avengers to leave for a bit while they make sure he’s not bleeding out internally and stitch Bucky up inside and out.

“That dosage will keep him under for half-an-hour,” Tony tells the ER nurses.  “Just so you know.”  The team collapses in the emergency waiting room, and it makes Steve’s eyes go hot and itchy that they want to wait with him to make sure Bucky’s okay. 

“He’s an idiot,” Steve repeats for the twentieth time.  He knows that he sounds more and more fond every time he says it.  It doesn’t erase the thread of panic from his voice, though. 

“I’d do that for you,” Clint insists to Natasha. 

“Unlike Steve’s empty threats, I’d actually kill you if you did that,” she tells him, deadpan.  But Steve notices that she takes his hand and starts to play with his pinkie finger when the rest of the team focuses their attention on the rickety TV in the corner. 

“De-hulking is exhausting,” Bruce says a few minutes later.  He stands up.  “Coffee anyone?”  Everyone chimes in with their order, and Bruce asks Steve to help him carry the cups. 

As soon as they’re around the waiting room corner, Bruce halts and takes a deep breath. 

“Bruce,” Steve starts.  He wants to say something about how he’s made his peace with his suspicions, and he’s grateful to Bruce but doesn’t need to hear it. 

“I was watching Bucky when he got ready for the fight today.  I don’t really have anything to do, besides pack a change of clothes,” Bruce tells him.  He starts walking again, as people stare at Steve in his full uniform, and he pulls them around a corner to an empty hallway. 

“Something happened when he was getting ready – he changed.  One moment he was kinda neutral looking, and he was fumbling with his straps, and then he closed his eyes and changed _._ ”

Steve stares at Bruce.  He has no idea what he’s talking about. 

“His demeanor.  The way he was holding himself.  The way he did the straps.  The look on his face.  Outwardly, he was the same person, but it all changed.  And then he was different.” 

Steve doesn’t know what to do with that information.  Bruce grunts, grasping at the air in front of him with his fingers like he can pull the right words together to explain what he’s getting at. 

“The moods.  They seem like they change suddenly, and I think you’re right.  I think they change in the span of a couple seconds, and then it’s like he’s a different person.” 

“Sort of, but not completely,” Steve argues, just to have some say in this conversation. 

“Know anyone else who can turn into a different person over the course of a couple seconds?” Bruce asks.  He juts his jaw forward determinedly.  He usually isn’t this aggressive in sharing his ideas, but Steve can tell that Bruce completely believes what he’s saying. 

A second later, he gets what Bruce is trying to tell him. 

“He- No.  You’re trying to tell me he’s like you?  Bruce, he doesn’t change like that.  I know he’s intense and kind of…homicidal when he fights, but he can stop it.  It’s not like you,” he says gently. 

“It’s not unlike me either.  There are two _minds_ in me, and they’re different as night and day.  There’s Bruce and there’s the Hulk.  I think you’re onto something with Bucky – I think there’s more than one mind in him, probably three.”

“Then why doesn’t he look any different?” Steve challenges.  Bruce opens and closes his mouth a few times without answering. 

“I don’t know,” he says finally.  “It’s a rough theory.  I’m still wrapping my head around it.  How it works, how much he knows, how dangerous it is…but there’s something here, Steve.  You think I haven’t researched the hell out of my condition?  It happens, to a much lesser degree, in regular people.  Multiple personalities.  That develop out of traumatic events – like what happened to Bucky, maybe for a really long time if Mencken was telling the truth.” 

“That’s not it,” Steve says sharply.  Because if that were the truth, it would mean that the person Steve’s been spending nearly every minute with for months, training together, living together, sleeping together – that would mean that it wasn’t always Bucky. 

And it was always Bucky.  Steve would know. 

“Body sharing has been recorded for centuries in diverse cultures,” Bruce starts what sounds like a well-rehearsed spiel, but Steve cuts him off. 

“It’s a theory.  I won’t ignore it, and I’ll talk it over with his doctors.  I need to go.”  He turns for back to the main hallway, and Bruce stays behind.  He speaks after Steve takes a few steps. 

“You consider me your friend and your teammate, but you can’t believe that your boyfriend might have what I have.  You can’t fathom that he might have monsters like the one in me.”  Steve pauses mid-step and turns back. 

“That’s not it,” he tells Bruce.  “If that was it, I’d be pounding down your door and asking for your help.  But I’m with him constantly, and he always knows me.  He never doesn’t know who I am or where we are or what I just…”

Said.  Bucky never forgets what Steve just said. 

But he does.  He forgets.  But later he remembers. 

Bruce watches him wrestle with his emotions, and he moves forward when Steve droops with defeat. 

“I’ll bring it up with Ronaldo.  Multiple persons, you said?” 

“Multiple personalities.  Look it up online.  See if it sounds like him.”  

“Is it curable?” Steve immediately asks.  He feels incredibly guilty that he can’t rule out such a farfetched theory, but every time he tries, his brain prods him with another memory.

Bucky cutting messages into his body.  Bucky declaring vehemently that he loved coffee and turning his nose up at it the next day.  Bucky fighting like a man possessed. 

“Somewhat.  There are ways, through therapy, to suppress the non-dominant personalities.  Talk to your doctor, and see what she thinks.  Although, it’s well-known enough that she should have screened for it already.  So maybe I’m wrong.” 

Bruce admitting that he might be wrong is even worse than him insisting that he’s right.  Because Steve’s brain protests against the idea and flings evidence at him, and he can’t discount it.  He’s maybe starting to believe it.

“Come on,” Bruce tells him, kinder now that Steve isn’t fighting his idea.  He looks almost guilty at the weight with which his theory sinks into Steve’s soul and weighs him down, making it feel like he’s walking through water. 

They make it back to the waiting room without coffee.  Tony looks like he’s going to say something, but Natasha elbows him.  They can all clearly see that something’s wrong.

Steve buries his face in his hands and _thinks._

He’s nowhere close to settled on the subject when the nurse comes to get them and tells them that Bucky’s waking up.  She lets one person go back to see him, and of course it’s Steve.  But he feels somehow like he’s an imposter, and like Bucky deserves someone who isn’t questioning everything he knows about him.  He almost sends Natasha in his place, but that would signal to the other Avengers that something really is wrong, and it’s too soon for that. 

Bucky’s blinking languidly and smiling up at Steve with dopey affection when Steve gets back to him.  He sees the bandages on Bucky’s stomach and lightly rests his hand over them, careful not to put pressure on the healing wound. 

“Did they do anything to me in surgery?” Bucky asks, tongue thick in his mouth.  And Steve runs traitorous eyes over the face he knows better than anyone’s, starting at his forehead and ending at his chin, before repeating the process over again. 

 _Are you him_? that part of him wants to ask.  But he doesn’t, because the heart knows what the mind doesn’t, and he won’t hurt Bucky with questions like that. 

Not without more proof. 

 

“May I speak to Dr. Diana Ronaldo?” Steve asks quietly into the phone while Bucky’s showering that night.  He’s not supposed to get his stitches wet, but his wound is already sealed, and even if he gets an infection, he’ll heal from it quickly enough. 

Steve doesn’t protest very much, because his heart is racing and he needs to talk to Bucky’s doctor. 

“This is Ronaldo.  Please state your reason for calling,” Ronaldo’s voice comes over the phone line.  She sounds terse, and Steve knows he’s caught her at home after eleven o’clock.

“Doctor, this is Steve Rogers,” Steve practically whispers.  He steps out onto the balcony and slides the door shut behind him, craning his neck towards the bathroom door.  He thinks he’ll know if Bucky opens it, because the light from the bathroom will spill out into the darkened apartment. 

“Steve, is everything alright with Bucky?” she asks.  Steve wets his lips, but he can’t bring himself to say it.  He’ll sound so foolish and distrustful if she laughs at him.  Or maybe she’ll take Bruce at his word and suspend Bucky’s probation to throw him back into a cell.

There are so many ways this can go wrong, and as Steve tries to find the words to start the conversation they need to have, he realizes that he’s swung back to disbelief.  Pendulum-like, he changes his mind by the minute.  Bruce’s theory makes no sense, but it also makes more sense than anything Steve’s thought up. 

“Do you know Dr. Bruce Banner?” Steve asks.  He’s stalling and possibly going to blame the whole idea on Bruce.  He feels bad. 

“I know of Dr. Banner,” Ronaldo answers cautiously.  She sounds confused, but it’s nowhere near the maelstrom of confusion in Steve’s head. 

“Well, he’s been spending more time with Bucky lately, and he’s had the chance to observe him more,” Steve tells her. 

“Dr. Banner isn’t a psychologist or psychiatrist,” Ronaldo reminds him curtly.  Her quick dismissal of Bruce is probably what flares up Steve’s protectiveness and makes him spit it out. 

“He’s an expert on multiple personalities,” Steve tells her.  Ronaldo is quiet.  Steve knows that she gets what he’s trying to say, because she’s one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met – and he has several geniuses in his circle. 

“You think Bucky might have DID?” Ronaldo asks several seconds later.  Those seconds stretch, and Steve nearly forgets what he’s just said by the time she answers. 

“DID?” he clarifies. 

“Dissociative Identity Disorder.  It’s documented but not common.  I ruled it out early on in Bucky’s treatment.” 

So it is a thing.  Bruce was right.  There could be a simple explanation for this, a known disease with a quick, easy acronym.  That makes it all the more real for Steve.  It excites him.  It terrifies him. 

“You need to check him again,” he tells her dully.  “I think you – and I – might have missed something.” 

“I can absolutely meet with him again.  But Captain Rogers, I assure you.  I’ve worked with DID patients before, and Bucky doesn’t fit the bill.”  Steve swallows. 

“Maybe there’s some things I haven’t told you,” he admits.  He can hear Ronaldo’s sharp exhale.

“Things like what?” she asks in a measured tone. 

“Things like memory problems.  Writing messages to himself.  Shifts in his per-in his mood.  Changing the way he moves.”  Steve ticks off his evidence on his fingers as he watches a car wreck on the street beneath him.  It looks like everyone is okay but furious, and he’s fascinated by the way traffic flows around them.  “Coffee,” he adds, voice breaking. 

“Bring him back to DC for screening,” Ronaldo tells him matter-of-factly. 

 

Steve makes sure that Bucky is around when Sharon calls to report that someone might have broken in to his DC apartment.  He assures her they’ll come back to check things out, and he hangs up on her knowing that she won’t be silent about this favor for long.  Sharon’s so curious, so he has to move fast. 

Bucky seems confused, but he’s willing enough to pack up and leave in the middle of the night.  He seems reluctant to leave the Avengers without saying anything, but Steve leaves a message with JARVIS and promises they’ll be back in a few days. 

That is, if Bucky isn’t in a SHIELD cell. 

No; there’s no way that can happen.  They’ve scratched the surface of what’s wrong with him, but it’s not the whole story. 

They drive back to DC with Steve’s heart pounding along with the music. 

 

* * *

 

The asset offers to hurt the person who broke into Steve’s apartment, but Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him that it doesn’t look like anyone really broke in.  Nothing’s gone, nothing’s damaged, and Sharon is unhelpfully vague when Bucky questions her about the reason for her phone call. 

It’s looking more and more like Sharon had just wanted Steve back under her thumb.  And Steve had insisted that they leave immediately.  That’s pretty glaring. 

Bucky crawls into Steve’s bed out of sad stubbornness while Steve and Sharon talk in the kitchen, partially because he’s used to sleeping with Steve now, and partially because he can’t let Steve sleep with someone else here.  This is Steve’s room, and Bucky will never be able to look at it if he knows that Steve bedded someone else here. 

Steve comes to bed and promises that they can sleep in late.  He thanks Bucky for dropping everything (what everything?) to come back to DC.  He whispers sweet things in Bucky’s ear, but his hand grips Bucky’s uninjured side, and Bucky knows that something’s happening. 

Maybe Steve finally wants him to go.  Maybe he didn’t want to ask Bucky with his friends around to see Bucky cast out.  Maybe those fucking hints that Stark has been dropping have gotten to him, and he doesn’t want to be around people who think he and Bucky are anything more than a very shattered man and his very whole caretaker. 

Or maybe he’s been thrown out of the Avengers.  Axel says that the Hydra scientist brought the cyanide capsule in, but Steve probably doesn’t believe that.  Not after the asset fucked up multiple times on multiple missions.  Maybe Steve doesn’t trust him on the team anymore, so he’s brought him back here.  Maybe he’ll go off on a mission in a few days’ time, and conveniently not return for a while. 

Or maybe the Hydra bitch said something.  Maybe she told Steve that Bucky has brothers who don’t have their own bodies, and they all live together like parasites or demons in the same damaged brain. 

He almost cries, but he’s not up to the task.  Steve’s hand feels like a brand, even after Steve drifts off to sleep around six in the morning, but he doesn’t shake it off.  It hurts more than the bullet wound on his other side. 

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe Steve doesn’t want Bucky taking bullets for him.  Maybe it’s too similar to what happened in DC, or he can’t stand for Bucky not to be in his debt anymore. 

He closes his eyes and forces himself to sink under.  He can’t be on top right now.  He’s not going to be able to handle whatever Steve is about to do.  He meanly hopes that Axel will be there when it happens, so he’ll see how wrong and childish he was about Steve all along. 

But then Axel won’t be with him.  And he kind of needs him right now to make him believe that things will be okay eventually. 

 

The next time Bucky wakes up, he’s sitting in Ronaldo’s office.  It surprises him, though he’s careful not to give it away.  Apparently coming back to DC means that he has to see her in person again?

“So let’s get started,” she says.  Bucky completely missed her opening remarks, but he smiles grimly and crosses his ankles.  At least this will distract him from whatever is weighing on Steve’s mind. 

“I want you to tell me about your memory,” Ronaldo asks with the eyebrow furrow and nod that Bucky’s come to expect from her during serious lines of questioning. 

“My memory?  Is pretty average.  I forget some stuff that happened when I was growing up, but it was a long time ago.  And Department X blended up my mind pretty good.”

“Any more recent memory problems?” she asks. 

“Not that I can think of,” Bucky tells her blandly.  He runs out of effort to maintain the smile, so he drops it. 

“Steve mentioned that you were having memory problems,” she persists, really determined to pursue this line of questioning. 

So Steve’s been talking to her.  Bucky thought they couldn’t, or didn’t talk about him.  Apparently he was wrong. 

“Sometimes I forget conversations here and there.  I usually remember them later,” he tells her. 

“But how can you be sure?” she asks. 

“I don’t know,” he answers.  So that line dries up. 

“Do you ever wake up and feel like you’ve done things without knowing about them?  Such as brushing your teeth, having a shower, or smoking a cigarette?” she asks. 

“No,” Bucky tells her. 

“Steve says you do.”  Bucky’s becoming more and more convinced that this has something to do with Steve’s agitated mood last night.  It’s too much of a coincidence that Ronaldo and Steve talked about him behind his back, and now she wants to ask all of these questions in their session. 

His mind flashes to Mencken again.  It’s eating at him, not knowing what she said before she offed herself.

“Do people ever behave as if you’ve said and done things that you have no knowledge about?”  Her questions are pointed and specific.  He realizes that, if she doesn’t know about him yet, she’s on the right track. 

“Can you come out and ask me what you’re trying to ask me?” he answers, angry.  She jots something down in her stupid notebook and then meets his eye. 

“Whom am I speaking with?” she asks, like that’s a normal question to ask the patient she’s been treating since winter.  There’s a thread of nervousness in her voice that Bucky immediately picks up on, because he can read these things.  He can’t read the most obvious body language sometimes, but he can read fear and anger like they’re pungent scents on the wind. 

“Bucky,” he tells her.  “Who else would I be?”  Then he gets up and leaves, ignoring her when she calls after him. 

Steve’s waiting in the staff lounge for him, and he looks up in surprise when Bucky comes out early. 

“I don’t feel like therapy today,” Bucky tells him in a growl.  Steve nods, but he looks nervous too. 

Which tells Bucky that it’s over.  Steve knows too.  He doesn’t know the precise details of how Steve knows, or what little conversations happened while he wasn’t paying attention, but it’s done.  Ronaldo knows.  Steve knows. 

The only thing left for Bucky to do is get his iPod and leave.  It might be nice if he can take some clothes too, but he hasn’t formulated a game plan for where he’s going, and he doesn’t know what he needs yet. 

The drive back to the apartment is quiet.  Steve clearly wants to say a hundred things, but he bites them all back.  He can’t look at Bucky, and Bucky’s actually impressed with his fortitude.  He didn’t drop Bucky off and leave him.  He isn’t, or at least it doesn’t look like he’s bringing Bucky to a looney bin.  Steve must remember crazy Nester Fallon from the neighborhood – perhaps he’s going to call people in white coats to pick Bucky up when they get back to the apartment. 

So Bucky needs to be gone by then. 

It was nice while it lasted.  He got to sleep by Steve’s side and touch him whenever he wanted.  The asset even protected Steve from being hurt, which makes Bucky swell with fondness.  He has so many good memories of Steve saved up to tide him through whatever’s next for him and the others, and he really is thankful.  It feels like this is a situation he should be angry about, but he’s not angry at Steve.  He’s been ready for this since he agreed to turn himself into SHIELD on that rooftop, and none of this is Steve’s fault. 

Steve checks his phone a few times while he drives, even though he’s a very safe driver. 

The sound that Steve’s keys make as they hit the bowl by the door is loud and sharp.  It wakes Bucky up from the fog he’s been under since Steve told him they needed to come back to DC.  He goes to his room to grab a few of his belongings, but he doesn’t want to ask Steve for a bag, so he can only take what will fit in his pockets and on his person. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks from behind him as Bucky changes into a long-sleeved shirt and adds a t-shirt over it.  He doesn’t think that Steve will mind him taking these things – Steve isn’t petty enough to begrudge him a few shirts. 

“Where’d we just go?” Steve asks bluntly.  He’s checking Bucky’s memory, which he’s been doing for weeks, but he’s not even trying to hide it under conversation anymore. 

“Dr. Ronaldo’s,” Bucky recites dutifully.  He turns around to look at Steve. 

“Why did you want to leave?” Steve asks. 

“Because I didn’t want to talk to her,” Bucky answers, feeling sick.  He wants to dance around this, but Steve likes directness.  He’ll probably force it into the open. 

Instead, Steve steps forward and hugs Bucky. 

“I love you,” he whispers against Bucky’s head.  “God, I love you.  And I think I’m finally seeing something that I really should have seen a long time ago.  I’m so sorry that I wasn’t paying attention,” he says, voice wet.  And Bucky hates that this is hurting him.  Hopefully it won’t hurt much longer. 

But…but what if Axel is right?  Steve isn’t turning away; he’s clutching Bucky against his chest.  He isn’t telling him that he needs to go somewhere for everyone’s best interests; he’s apologizing.  He isn’t violent; he’s nearly crying. 

“I have a lead,” Steve continues.  “And I’m working with Ronaldo.  We’re going to take care of everything.  We’re going to fix this and, um,” he hesitates on the idea.  Then he cups his hand over the back of Bucky’s head and holds him like he never wants Bucky to pull away.  “We’ll get this out of you.  I promise,” he breathes into Bucky’s hair. 

And Bucky’s blood runs cold. 

Axel, Yasha, and the asset aren’t diseases to cure.  They’re not problems to root out. 

They’re the reason Bucky survived decade after decade of pain.  They’re the reason he didn’t go truly mad from loneliness.  They’re what he lived for when he thought Steve was dead and he himself wanted to be dead. 

And he will not let Steve touch them. 

Bucky brings his arm up and hugs Steve back.  He inhales Steve’s scent, strong and minty, and pushes his nose into the soft spot beneath Steve’s ear that he’s become obsessed with.  He never knew about this spot before, when Steve was small, but it’s one of his favorite things. 

Then he pulls back. 

“Uh, bathroom,” he tells Steve.  “Stay here.  Then we’ll talk.”  Steve nods so earnestly, and Bucky almost kisses him.  But he doesn’t want to alert Steve that anything’s amiss.  They still haven’t kissed since the night in Steve’s bedroom before he turned himself in– the asset kissed him when he needed to convince him about Strange, Yasha kissed him after the asset threw their body in front of a bullet, and for all Bucky knows, maybe Axel has kissed Steve too.  He thinks Axel’s come on to Steve before.  He hasn’t said anything, because in some ways, he’s grateful. 

But Bucky hasn’t kissed Steve since that delirious night when he crept inside, and he’ll lose it if he tries to do it now. 

He slips into the bathroom and runs the water to mask the noise.  He finds the razor Steve bought him in the top drawer, and he holds it in his teeth so he can pull his thumb across its multiple, thin blades. 

Then he lets the razor clatter into the sink.  He holds his finger to the mirror, and something possesses him to write in Russian, not English.  It’s the same words from long ago, because he has to invoke their power.  They mobilized the brothers, and Bucky needs them to do that now.  They’ll have to move quickly to get away from Steve and SHIELD.   

Вы должны скрыть, he writes.  Run.  Hide. 

He tucks his bleeding thumb against his palm and leaves his other four fingers extended.  He looks into the mirror before he closes his eyes, and he notices that he’s crying.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Fights - Asset  
> Wake-up scene - Bucky  
> Diner - Axel  
> In the prison - Axel  
> Movie night - Yasha, then Bucky  
> After being shot - Yasha


	6. Lover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to DG for clarifying some things about therapy, and to Grey for cheerleading (get those pom-poNs, lady) and fielding my frustrations more than once.

Steve sits quietly on the edge of Bucky’s bed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers.  He waits for Bucky to get back from the bathroom so they can talk more.  He knows they need to talk about this, because the problem is in Bucky’s mind.  It’s invisible to the naked eye, an illness that betrays all attempts to diagnose short of actually getting Bucky to talk about it.

And Bucky doesn’t like talking about these things – himself, his captivity, his issues.  He pretends they don’t exist, even if he can’t quite smooth out the anxiety in his face when Steve asks about them. 

But they need to talk.  Steve needs to know more – and Bucky is the only one who can give him and Ronaldo the answers needed to fix this. 

He’s not sure, though, how to make sure it’s actually Bucky he’s speaking to.  He hasn’t even fully wrapped his head around this Dissociative Identity sickness – is Bucky just not aware whenever another personality is moving his body like a puppet?  Is he aware but unable to do anything about it?  Is he completely in the dark?  Does he know about it and think it’s not a problem worth addressing? 

Are they even on the right track here?  Because Steve still isn’t sure. 

And if they are right, which Ronaldo says the person in Bucky’s body who spoke with her during therapy today all but confirmed, then how dangerous are these other personalities?  Are they dangerous to Bucky?  To other people? 

So he needs to tread carefully.  He doesn’t want to say anything that will tip off the alter egos and make them do anything rash. 

Maybe he should just stick with reassuring Bucky tonight. 

Maybe he should ask some questions that only Bucky would know the answer to.  He’ll ask about their first kiss, or the first time they made love. 

But can the other things lurking behind his eyes read his mind? 

Steve bends forward and grabs his head with both hands.  He doesn’t know what to _do._ He has no idea what to say. 

Ronaldo just told him to make sure that Bucky knows he’s loved and safe.  She said they’ll talk tomorrow and figure out a plan to convince Bucky to share what he knows. 

He raises his head up and looks at the clock, suddenly acutely aware that it’s been well over ten minutes since Bucky went to the bathroom. 

“Buck?” he calls from the bedroom, sliding to his feet seconds later when Bucky doesn’t call back.  He approaches the bathroom with a bad feeling and heavy steps, and he knocks on the door.  The light’s still on inside, but Bucky doesn’t respond. 

“I’m breaking the door down,” he warns, his voice dull with too many emotions, and then he smashes into his bathroom door with his shoulder.  It rips free of the hinges, and he catches his balance as he stumbles into the bathroom. 

There’s blood on the mirror.  There’s a bloody razor in the sink. 

“Oh my God,” he breathes, whipping his head around to look for Bucky on the floor. 

He isn’t there.  It’s a relief, but only for a second.  The window is open, and even though it’s several stories to the ground below, he knows that Bucky is gone. 

He looks at the mirror again.  The blood is running down the glass in rivulets, but it almost looks like words.  He stares at them for almost a minute before it clicks why he can’t read anything – the words are in Russian. 

He texts a picture of the mirror to Natasha as he climbs onto his motorcycle.  He checks it at a light, and she’s texted back ‘????  It says, you need to hide.  What’s going on???’ 

He calls Sam at the next light.  He’s looping through the nearby streets, hoping to see some sign of Bucky but knowing deep inside that he won’t.  It’s like the time he chased Bucky over the roofs and into the office building – Bucky can outrun him when he needs to, and he has a head start of several minutes. 

“Sam, I need your help.  Bucky’s gone,” he shouts over the roar of his engine when Sam picks up. 

“Dude, remember what we said about giving him space?” Sam chides him gently. 

“Ronaldo thinks that Bucky has something called Dissociative Identity Disorder, which means that there’s more than one personality living in his head and making him do stuff, and one of them just wrote on my mirror in his blood and took him away, and I don’t know where he is or who’s controlling him right now,” Steve rushes to say before the light turns green.  It switches as he finishes his thought.  “Call Natasha and anyone else who’s available.  I need your help.  Please help me,” he yells. 

The car behind him honks, and he hangs up and puts his foot on the gas. 

He feels like screaming.  He feels like sobbing.  But he shoves those impulses deep down, because Bucky comes before his own emotional breakdown, and he _needs_ to find Bucky. 

He needs to somehow save him from himself. 

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes up on the run.  He’s curled under a bench in a bus terminal, his hand stuffed into his pocket to protect his iPod and the handful of crumpled bills he’s stolen so far.  There’s a gun that the asset says he took off a cop tucked into the back of Bucky’s waistband, and as he expects, there’s a bus ticket in his shoe. 

He pulls out the ticket to assess his location.  He’s in Cleveland, an hour out from boarding a bus to Chicago.  His body has probably only been asleep for about 30 minutes. 

It’s been an entire night and part of a day since he left.

He rolls out from beneath the bench, making sure his stolen Pirates hat covers his face from the cameras.  He goes to the bathroom to piss and splash some water on his face, and an elderly man watches him fasten the button on his jeans. 

“Fuck do you want?” he growls.  He’s just trying to slip under the radar and get to the middle of the country, away from larger cities, where it’s easier to disappear.  It’s not fair if people keep looking at him when all he wants is to be invisible. 

“You lose that arm in the war, son?” the man asks.  Bucky raises an eyebrow, but he’s been provided with a story.  It works well enough – and it technically isn’t untrue.

“Yeah.  Army,” he mutters. 

He turns to leave the bathroom, and the man calls out “Thank you for your service!”

Even as he rolls his eyes, it puffs his chest out a little.  Those words are what soldiers hear when they get back from war – and no one’s ever said them to Bucky.  No one cared about his service when he was a prisoner, and no one remembered it when he came back. 

His pride is dashed when he resorts to stealing a bottle of juice and a stale bagel from the little newsstand in the back of the terminal.  He’s certain that war heroes don’t steal from others like huge, dirty pigeons, but they’re in survival mode right now.  As soon as they find someplace safer for a little bit, they can figure out a way to live without taking from people.  It’s important to most of them, especially Yasha. 

But this isn’t a safe place.  This is a travel hub, and Steve and the Avengers have to be monitoring those. 

Yasha said that Sam Wilson almost caught up to them in Pittsburgh before their bus left for Cleveland.  And yet, here they are, about to board another bus. 

He feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin.  He just knows that this is a bad idea. 

He sits down on a bench and holds up a single finger to call himself back out.  He can’t make this decision without talking to the others, but he wants to see it through.  The asset got them out of DC with Steve on their heels, Axel got them out of Annapolis, and Yasha got them out of Pittsburgh.  It’s his turn to pull his weight. 

Axel and the asset are in the apartment when he sinks under.  They look him over, surprised, and Axel actually looks hopeful.  He’s been hoping Bucky will change his mind about running even as they all throw themselves into their escape.  Because his brothers are backing him up on this, even if they don’t understand or agree with it. 

It’s hard to get them to understand.  They weren’t there when Steve promised wholeheartedly to rip them out of Bucky.  They didn’t hear his resolution, or his fear, when he made that promise. 

It’s their lives that are in danger, not Bucky’s.  They can’t conceptualize how they could be killed individually. 

But Bucky was the first.  He remembers, although it’s hazy, what it was like without them in his head.  And he thinks that, if they can be created, there’s a way for them to be destroyed. 

So he propels them forward, away from Steve who means well but just doesn’t understand what he’s threatened to do.  What he will do, if Bucky doesn’t scramble fast enough.  He can’t see a way in which Steve knows about the others but doesn’t want to smother them out of Bucky – Steve’s never been much for shades of gray.  He believes in good and evil, and he can’t understand the blurred space between where Bucky and his brothers make their home. 

And they run when he says run.  They run with everything they’ve got.  They’re too used to relying on each other not to.  He doesn’t think there’s a limit to what he can ask from them – or what they can ask from him. 

“We need to get away from buses.  We can’t keep the same MO,” he insists to Axel and the asset. 

“Planes are too secure, and there are no subways out here,” the asset tells him. 

“What are you thinking?” Axel asks.  Bucky thinks about a past escape, and it comes to him.  They should have been doing this earlier. 

“Take a car.  Drive west,” he proposes. 

Minutes later, he’s back on the surface and breaking into a truck in the terminal parking lot.  He doesn’t know why he picks the truck – maybe because it reminds him of Steve’s truck, or maybe because it’s old and he thinks it’s worth less than the other cars, or maybe because they’re going west and he knows there are a lot of trucks there. 

He has to stop and purchase gasoline several hours into the trip, and he buys a hotdog and steals a bag of popcorn while he’s at it.  When he gets back to the truck, he realizes that he has no idea what the cashier at the gas station had looked like, even though he very specifically kept aware of him while he was tucking the popcorn into the sweatshirt he found in the truck. 

It gives him an idea for hiding down the road.  No one notices cashiers in plain sight. 

‘Cleveland High Cavaliers’ is printed on the front of the sweatshirt, and there’s a name on the back.  ‘Jones.’  So he’ll be Jones from Cleveland who lost his arm in Afghanistan.  That works for the time being. 

 

The next time he stops, he parks the car on the side of the road and climbs over a wooden fence into a field.  His body is giving all the signs that it needs sleep – real sleep, without anyone on top – so he finds a spot on the ground to sleep for another hour or so.  There’s tall grass and wildflowers to hide him from the road, and if it’s a bit buggy, that’s not a huge deal. 

There were bugs in his early Department X cells.  He thinks, if it hadn’t been for Axel, he probably would have tried to befriend them. 

 

The next time he wakes up, he’s sitting in a hard, wooden booth at some kind of restaurant.  There’s a dull, chipped menu board above the glass door which announces that he’s at Waffle House.  He looks down at his table and sees a half-drunk cup of coffee and a napkin in front of him.  There’s a phone number on the napkin.  He leaves it with the coffee and doesn’t pay. 

He gets a glimpse of the date through the grubby glass in a newspaper machine on his way out.  It’s July 1st.  That means Steve’s birthday is in a few days.  He wishes he hadn’t left so close to Steve’s birthday, but to be honest, what would he have done for it?  Steve’s much better off with his friends.  Maybe they’ll give him a birthday party. 

It’s been a week since he left.  The Avengers fought a wizard and his bewitched appliances a few days back.  Bucky read the story in an abandoned newspaper.  Captain America wasn’t on that mission. 

He’s in Troy, Illinois, but it isn’t far enough away from DC or New York yet.  He finds the truck, which either Axel or Yasha parked like a drunk, and climbs in. 

The radio keeps him company on these long stretches as he flies down highways and back roads.  He plays a game to pass the time.  Whenever he hears a song he’s never heard before, he turns left.  Whenever he hears a song he’s come across, he turns right. 

It’s how they loop through the plains states, back and forth, destroying the clean lines of their tracks. 

They sleep in the truck more often than not, although sometimes they have enough pilfered cash to get a hotel room for the night. 

Those are the nights with showers, and with TV, and with Bucky able to stretch out diagonally on the bed and know that Steve is just a phone call away.  He can see the yellowing receiver out of the corner of his eye, and he knows Steve’s cell phone number by heart, and it’s enough to make him feel their connection. 

Of course he never calls. He’s not stupid.

 

July passes.  They eat a lot of gas station food.  They make it into Oklahoma, and the constant tension in Bucky’s muscles finally starts to ebb. 

He can’t imagine any of the Avengers ever making their way to Oklahoma.  The red dirt and oil-scented air are enough of a deterrent to most of Steve’s city-slicker teammates, including Steve himself, who has always needed a city skyline to feel like he’s home.  He likely thinks the same of Bucky, which makes it the perfect hiding spot. 

The only thing Bucky needs to feel like he’s home is Steve, but that’s not an option anymore, so he settles for the staples that have defined _okay_ for him for decades.  He’s eating, his brothers are safe, and he has something to occupy him, be it a book or music.  Actually, he has books _and_ music now, so he’s much better off than he could be. 

After over a month of travelling at least twelve hours a day, they’re ready to stop and rest for a while.  Hiding is as important as running is, because they’re breaking yet another pattern. 

The bills in Bucky’s pocket only go so far as the weekly rent on a trailer, so he forks over his 120 dollars and ignores the greasy proprietor’s eyes on his empty sleeve.

“War or shop accident?” the man asks.  Bucky thinks, but they haven’t decided to be anyone besides Jones from Cleveland by way of Afghanistan.  He’s already told the man that his name is Casey Jones, which is Yasha’s idea.

 “Combat,” he answers.  The man nods like Bucky’s passed a test. 

The trailer is small and cramped.  There are no sheets on the bed, which he doesn’t particularly care about, but there are a few dishes rattling around in the cupboards.  He likes it; he’d felt like a tiny fish swimming in the ocean of Steve’s apartments, both of them.  He doesn’t know what to do with too much space, and he likes it much better when he can see all of his corners in the same glance. 

He’s not quite sure how to go about getting a TV and hooking it up to whatever cables and plugs are needed, so to pass the time, he breaks into a library the next town over at night and borrows a few selections. 

Most of the books he’s been reading on the run are cheap paperbacks from Wal-Mart and truck stops, but he slowly walks through the library’s darkened shelves, surveying each area thoughtfully while the alarm blares in his ears and relying on the emergency lighting to show him the books’ spines.  He decides to take a few from the ‘Bestseller’ section and a few he recognizes from his time in Department X.  He wants to see if Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin are different in English.  Or if they’re different when he’s free. 

Two days after the library heist, Bucky’s sitting on his front step and fumbling with the four competing receipts-as-bookmarks in _Anna Karenina_ when a truck pulls up and two girls climb out.  They’re young, probably in their early twenties, and dressed for the stifling Midwest August. 

There was a time when Bucky could flirt like he breathed, could get any girl he wanted writhing and shucking off her stockings underneath him, but that’s gone.  It’s one of a thousand parts of him that snapped off like pieces on those model planes Steve used to make when they had the money, and it’s left him smooth and raw and incredibly boring.  He closes his eyes and holds out three fingers in between the pages of his book. 

The next time Bucky floats to the surface, they have a job.  The girls, whose names he can’t remember, are apparently waitresses at a restaurant devoted entirely to selling chicken wings.  Bucky’s job is to walk around with a plastic box and clear the tables of food scraps and dishes when customers are done eating. 

It makes him sick to see how much food is wasted, but he’s earning money.  At the end of every night, the manager gives him a roll of small bills, and he understands to some degree that he’s not working legally.  He can’t, because Casey Jones from Cleveland by way of Afghanistan doesn’t have an ID or any paperwork.  The world has become fixated on IDs and paperwork, while Bucky remembers a time when Steve could get away with falsifying his enlistment paperwork five times over. 

In the end, though, Steve paid for it.  They strapped him to a table and shot the serum into him, and Bucky still wakes up in a panic, choking back distress as dream-Steve screams and bleeds with the anguish of what Erskine and the government did to him. 

Bussing tables takes his mind off Steve.  No one really notices him, beyond the people who stare at his limp sleeve, so he has plenty to observe. He watches families, couples, and friends, and it strikes him how relaxed they are.  They aren’t constantly looking over their shoulders or eating as fast as they can before the food disappears.  For the most part, the most distress they feel is when their sports team loses a game on the huge TV monitors covering every inch of wall space in the restaurant. 

Except sometimes people are afraid.  He sometimes sees kids with flickers of fear in their eyes, or girls who regard their boyfriends warily.  He’s seen large groups of boisterous, bawdy men with one, terrified man in their midst, likely afraid that the group will see some difference in him that they don’t like. 

It gets under his skin, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.  He thinks the man he used to be, back when their oldest customers were children, would have done something about it.  Or maybe he’s confusing himself with Steve; that’s probably it. 

The girls who got them the job wink at him or flirt from time to time, and he smiles vacantly back at them.  After work, sometimes they talk to him or ask for rides home, and it isn’t until he’s brushing his teeth and notices a discarded prophylactic in the trash that he realizes Yasha is stepping out with one or both of them. 

It’s a new level of worldliness for them, but he can’t find a reason to be upset.  He wants Yasha to be happy, especially after what happened with Natalia.  And he’s long accepted that his brothers can and will use their body however they please.  But he’s worried about how quickly Yasha falls in love and develops attachments.

 

Before August is out, they get the nervous twitch that means it’s time to move again.  They pack up their small but growing collection of belongings in a cardboard box and hit I-40 right around the time their shift is supposed to start.  Yasha wails and insists that they need to take Tiffani with them, but he meets Maria in a bar in Texas a few nights later.  They stay with her for a few days, and Bucky doesn’t mind too much when she sits on his lap one morning and smokes with him. 

“So you’re running?” she asks him, carding her fingers through his hair.  The gesture makes him think of Steve. 

“Something like that,” he tells her, not fully clear what the others have said.  Now that they’re moving more quickly and meeting people more rapidly, it’s getting harder to keep up inside the apartment.  They can’t share information fast enough, and it soon becomes outdated.  They’ll have to think of a way to fix that.

“I mean, it’s not that hard to find a one-armed guy with a gorgeous face and this hair,” she tells him.  “I know you can’t do much about the arm or the face, but maybe the hair ain’t the best idea.” 

She cuts it for him in her kitchen, his bare back pressed against the hard slats of a rickety wooden chair, and he watches clumps of his hair fall soundlessly onto the curling, blue-and-white laminate floor.  Then he sends Yasha out to thank her. 

 

After that, they go to Colorado.  Bucky gets them a job as a gas station cashier on the night shift, and it gives them long, unrestricted hours to read.  In addition to the books, which they keep collecting because they all read at wildly different paces and Bucky will finish a book before the asset is more than a few chapters in, there are magazines and newspapers at the gas station. 

Bucky doesn’t care for the celebrity news, but sometimes, there are glossy, color photographs of the Avengers in ‘People’ and ‘Star Magazine.’  He buys an issue with a half-page photo of Steve in civilian clothes, walking into the tower with two trays of coffee mugs, and he writes on the magazine cover in marker ‘Do not throw this out.’ 

It gives Axel an idea.  In Karpov’s prison, before they learned to talk in their mind, they’d communicated through physical notes in the real world.  Somehow, Axel finds a pocket-sized spiral notebook, and he says they have to start recording what happens when they’re on top. 

_8:50 pm – woke up before shift, late (asset’s fault), came in.  Energy drink, chips at 10.  Read for a while – stop fucking dog-earing the pages.  Drunk, violent customers – almost had to break up a fight, but didn’t.  Will share their descriptions later in case they come back.  3 am – bored, going under._

That’s how their entries typically read, and they are helpful.  It’s how they keep track of the names of the people they see more than once, and the times they’re supposed to report to work, and the money they’re owed. 

They stay in a hotel room this time.  It’s seen better days, but they haven’t.  They have choices now, and they choose to work for food and shelter instead of stealing it – granted they’re working menial jobs, and the asset usually refuses to help, but they’re hardly proud.  There was a time when Bucky would take any job, even shoveling shit at the Prospect Park Zoo, to buy Steve a thicker coat or a draught of actual medicine, not just whiskey mixed with honey.  

They can choose whatever they want.  Bucky chooses to buy smokes, and there are dozens to pick from.  Yasha chooses to buy an overpriced pair of aviator sunglasses that do, admittedly, help them turn heads both male and female.  Axel chooses to rescue a hot plate from a dumpster, so they can heat up soup or noodles, instead of eating fast food every day.  The asset chooses to do pushups and run around the shitty excuse for a local pond. 

Sometimes it feels overwhelming to Bucky.  He sometimes wants to laugh in surprise that he gets this – he can ask for something, he can have it, and no one is breathing down his neck to take it away.  No one can take anything away unless he and his brothers let it happen, and it’s a scary rush.  Sometimes he balances on the edge of that rush, and it’s too much; he has to go under.  But other times, he can hold his head above it, buy a fucking banana because he wants to, and then throw half of it away because it tastes horrendous.  And no one can stop him.

The thing he wants most, but will never have again, is Steve.  That goes without saying – they’ve stopped mentioning Steve in the apartment because Bucky imagines he looks like a kicked dog when they bring him up. 

The loss of Steve is like an open wound.  It’s like an ulcer in the mouth that hurts regardless, but when you prod it, it screams in pain.  That’s what Steve feels like.  Except he prods intentionally – he looks for Steve on TV, in newspapers, and even on the internet on the rare occasions they’re around a computer, and it’s the perfect amount of pain to see that Steve’s gone on a mission, or he’s been spotted in New York with one of the other Avengers. 

Because that means he isn’t looking.  It doesn’t mean they can stop hiding, because that’s a permanent thing.  But it means Steve’s okay, and losing Bucky again didn’t tear him apart.  At least not the same way that it tore Bucky apart – he doesn’t question his decision to leave, but it’s hard.  He’s giving up the best man he knows for the three men whom he can’t live without, and there are times where the only things that he keeps going for are his stupid, page-bending brothers. 

He thinks about parking the truck on a set of train tracks and waiting to finally end it all, but that defeats the purpose of getting away from Steve.  Once he accepts that, it crystalizes for him in a way that’s never been so clear before that suicide really isn’t an option.  It’s always been an out, and now it’s not.  He needs to give it up.

So he thinks about going deep.  He’s never really tried before, but the others have flirted with it.  They just don’t know much about the depths of their mind.  They don’t know how many layers of consciousness there are to fall through, and they don’t know how deep it’s possible to fall before…

Before you can’t get back up.  Basically, what Steve and Ronaldo want to happen.  The four of them fear it, and there’s no way to test it. 

The closest Bucky has come to going deep is the few times he’s had panic attacks from not being able to handle sheer _joy_.  He’s not equipped for emotions like that, and there were moments living with Steve where he was positive that he was going to sink into the recesses of his brain and trap himself there, so full of emotions from Steve touching him or smiling at him, and it wouldn’t have been a bad way to go. 

But when he specifically tries to fall into the deep, it’s hard.  It’s hard to let go of awareness on command, and he’s so familiar with falling into the apartment, but he can’t seem to fall farther back. 

He thinks he gets it, once.  Everything feels black and warm, and his only thoughts are errant thoughts about Anna Karenina throwing herself under the train or the penny candy his mother used to buy him and Rebecca.  Then the yelling starts, and the others bring him back to the apartment, furious. 

They don’t let him try again.

And as the months pass, he feels the wound start to scab.  He misses Steve and will always miss him – seventy years in captivity taught him that.  But he feels like he breathes a little freer for the first time since he turned himself into SHIELD.  He can be himself – the _himself_ who carries a notebook full of trivial reminders, and who can leave messages for the others in plain sight, and who barely has to worry about a charade beyond the flimsy veneer of Casey Jones from Cleveland by way of Afghanistan that they put on in front of their boss at the Conoco gas station. 

He can relax.  He can enjoy what he wants to enjoy.  And he doesn’t have to pretend to like coffee, or anything. 

 

Running has a rhythm.  It’s getting cooler when they go to Nevada, and they find another trailer to rent because they’re not much for neighbors.  Axel insists they buy sheets this time, because they’re not animals, and Yasha figures out how to hook up a fuzzy TV. 

They find a job stocking at at local grocery store, Gallagher Market.  They have one arm, but they’re strong – and Axel proves it by helping the beleaguered forklift do its job. 

Stocking means less time for reading, but the constant work is nice.  Bucky’s still a little shaky with their right hand, but the others stack cans and boxes so well that it starts to raise eyebrows.  Bucky walks around making adjustments after Axel or Yasha finish shift, pushing stacks and towers slightly back or slightly to the left to make up for the fact that they’re stacking dry goods with a hand precise enough to pull a trigger in between heartbeats. 

Unlike the solitude of the gas station job, there are always people around here.  They frequently want to talk to him, and they come back over and over after Bucky’s politely turned them away. 

He realizes, in a mind-boggling way, that this means they’re making _acquaintances._   Yasha and Axel are talking to these people regularly enough that they’re not put off by what they see as his occasional rudeness.  Sure enough, he starts to see more names in the notebook. 

_Tim – says he knows a guy who makes fake IDs_

_Bo – Nice guy, covered for us one time_

_Shareen – Guys, be nice to her_

Luckily, they work in a place where everyone wears name tags.  Bucky makes a concerted effort to be more talkative with the people in the notebook, even if his best attempts result in strange, left-field compliments and rehashing the weather yet again. 

The stockers are an interesting mix of young and old, mostly minority workers who need the paycheck, shitty as it is.  Bucky fits much better here among these people ground down by life than he does among the shiny robots and expensive decorations of Stark Tower.

They get invited to a party, and Yasha actually goes to it.  People start to include them in smoke break conversations and illicit snacks in the back room. 

It’s like a glove that doesn’t fit quite right, but that’s okay, because it doesn’t have to.  They don’t have to play Bucky, and Bucky doesn’t have to spend every second worrying that they’ll fuck up.  They’re someone else now, Casey, a conglomerate of all four of them and also someone else entirely, and the stakes of fucking up aren’t much more than getting on the road again. 

He doesn’t have to act like himself, a monumental task – he can just act. 

Yasha starts to date Shareen, so she hangs herself on Bucky during breaks and tries to suss out her lover’s backstory.  Bucky sticks to the things they’ve agreed upon and lets himself be mysterious. 

When they’re not on break with Shareen’s vinegar-y perfume tickling his nose, their job is actually pretty terrible.  Most of the stockers are under-the-table workers like Bucky, but that’s because the store won’t hire them properly, not because running a search on their social security numbers will turn up equally interesting results.  Their hours are long, and most of them are expected to work seven days a week.  And six dollars an hour seems high to Bucky, but apparently, it isn’t. 

It gives Bucky something to talk about.  Their tyrant boss becomes the common enemy, and all Bucky has to contribute to a conversation sometimes is, ‘yeah, what an asshole.’  Slowly, he figures out how to socialize without Steve there as a barrier. 

In October, he brings up the idea of moving on, but the others are quiet.  Yasha has Shareen; Axel’s started seeing a big, blonde guy named Mark on the side (which Shareen can’t find out about); and even the asset has a weird newspaper-collecting-and-cutting project when he deigns to surface. 

So they turn over another week of rent.  And then another.  And then another. 

 

One day, Bucky’s stacking frozen meals in a freezer and thinking distantly about Steve being frozen for so long when he hears a crash behind him.  He whips his head around and sees another stock boy, Malik, screwing up his face like he’s trying not to cry.  He’s leaning against a freezer and holding his ribs, and a second later, Bucky makes the connection between the soup-laden shopping cart a few inches in front of him and his injury. 

He pivots the other direction to see three local boys, all teenagers judging by their fashion choices, chuckling and trying to keep a straight face for Bucky, the ‘adult’ in the situation.  Bucky looks back at Malik, and then he looks at the boys again. 

He doesn’t know where it comes from, but he hears the frozen meals clattering to the ground at his feet, and he’s suddenly striding forward and kicking one of the boys in the seat of his pants as he tries to saunter away.  The boy falls with a yelp into his friend, and Bucky grabs the third boy by his collar and shoves him roughly up against a metal display of ice cream cones. 

“What the fuck did you just do?” he growls.  The boy’s eyes widen in terror, and Bucky shakes him a little.  “You’re not going to tell me?  You just slammed a heavy cart into him.  He might have a broken rib.  Go fucking apologize, _now.”_ The boy looks like he wants to shake his head, and his eyes dart to his friends. 

“You think you can slink away like I can’t make your friend here tell me your names.  Stay put,” Bucky orders them without looking.  He pulls the first boy over to Malik and makes sure to pinch the nerve on his shoulder that makes his whole body wince. 

“Apologize,” he orders again.  The boy does, and then Bucky repeats the process with the other two. 

After they turn tail and run, he returns to the frozen meals.  A few are dented, so he throws them back into the cart, but the others can still go in the freezer.  He’s propping the door open with his bad shoulder and lifting in boxes five at a time when he realizes that Malik is standing at his elbow.  He’s still clutching his side, but he looks better.  There aren’t any tears welling in his eyes, and his bottom lip is steady. 

It hits Bucky like a train, where the impulse to step in had come from.  He would have thought Department X cut it out of him like a tumor, but his protective instinct is still there, and it still flares up whenever someone big is picking on someone small.  He can’t count the number of times he found Steve in that situation, his fear palpable but his desire to do the “right thing” spilling over and making him stand his ground, even as his tiny fists shook. 

That image has always been a match to Bucky’s wick, and even in this century, he can’t stand idly by. 

“I don’t like bullies,” he offers as an explanation to Malik, knowing that’s what he wants. 

“Thanks, Casey,” Malik says earnestly, and Bucky shrugs it off, embarrassed.  He really doesn’t like bullies, and he can’t stomach the fear they instill.  It might be Steve’s lines he’s stealing, but he’d always been the muscle to back Steve up and make sure he could go on spouting off those lines and refusing to back down from assholes like Malik’s bullies.

He has to write about it in the notebook so the others will understand why Malik’s suddenly their shadow, and it makes him self-conscious.  He doesn’t feel like what he did was noble or special, but Axel tries to spin it like it’s some significant thing that Bucky defended someone besides himself and his brothers. 

He knows it isn’t, but he does feel lighter.  Almost more purposeful, if that weren’t a pathetic way to think. 

He tries not to think about it, but it worms its way into his thoughts.  Not about him, about his brothers – are they feeling like this?  Or are they still in that void where the only things that seem like they’ll ever matter are each other or long gone? 

He asks Axel about it one day when it’s just them and the asset in the apartment, and they can talk quietly while the asset tests his mental reflexes. 

“I guess I’ve pretty much made it my purpose to keep you three yahoos in check.  Keep us from turning against ourselves, or going too far out of line.  And I like it.  I feel good about it,” Axel tells him.

“But that’s still _us_ ,” Bucky argues.  “What about besides us?  What’s yours?”  Axel shrugs. 

“I don’t have anything.  It all goes to you guys,” he says nonchalantly enough that Bucky feels shame flush under his imaginary cheeks. 

“We’re finding you something,” he declares.  “Something that’s yours, and that you don’t need us for.  What do you want?  Chess?  Writing?”

“I’m still sick of chess,” Axel tells him with a grimace. 

“Then pick something else.  And try it, at least once, without thinking about us.”  It’s hard to imagine any of them will ever be able to exist without thinking of the others – even when he’s on top, Bucky constantly thinks about how they would react to what he sees and says, and he’s always curious about what’s going on in the apartment without him.  But it’s the principle of the thing.  Axel’s saved him so many times, and he wants him to have something beyond cleaning up their messes to his name. 

“So, I didn’t write this down, but uh.  I went to a church meeting with Mark a few days ago, and I liked it,” Axel tells him.  He looks flustered, and it sits weirdly on him.  Bucky blinks. 

“Oh.  That’s…good.  If you want that.” 

“I do,” Axel tells him quickly.  “Haven’t really talked about it because, um.”  Because Bucky’s long since given up on believing in any sort of God or even any sort of Devil.  Despite his perfect Sunday School attendance as a child, he’s fallen.  The idea of a merciful ruler is laughable to him, and he can’t envision anything crueler or more evil than man. 

“It’s fine if you’re a believer.  Good, actually – I don’t know how you go through what we did and still have that kind of faith in anything upstairs.  I just don’t,” Bucky says.    

“From my perspective, coming out the other end of everything really sealed it for me,” Axel tells him with a small laugh.  They sit in silence for a few minutes, contemplating each other.  The asset makes noise in the background. 

“You don’t have to hide it,” Bucky promises.  “We’re allowed to believe in different things.    Yasha believes in Lenin, and the asset probably believes in one of those old-timey blood sacrifice philosophies.” 

“I do not,” the asset says indignantly from his corner, proving that he is listening. 

“And you believe in Steve Rogers,” Axel tells him. He sounds hesitant, but there’s a rush in his voice like he’s been looking for a time or place to talk about Steve for a while. 

But Bucky doesn’t know what purpose that would serve. 

 

There are four things that they carry on them at all times; Axel’s notebook, Bucky’s iPod, Yasha’s pretty boy sunglasses, and the asset’s gun.  As far as he knows, the gun is just a safety blanket, something for the asset to run his fingers over and feel like he’s not being smothered by work aprons and dollar store dishes. 

They’re pretty lenient with him about working, because Bucky doesn’t want him to get fed up and open fire in the store.   He hopes it wouldn’t happen, but he can’t pretend that the asset was bred for anything like this life.  Working with the Avengers gave him a chance to Run, and a chance to do what he is bred for, but he’s been cooped up like a pet tiger in a tiny cage for months now. 

None of them are sure how to solve this problem – allowing the asset to kill someone obviously isn’t a workable solution, but he needs to stretch his legs.  He’s like a fish suffocating on land, except instead of water he needs, it’s blood. 

He solves the problem for them with a surprisingly well-thought-out plan. 

Bucky looks at the asset’s crude newspaper cut-outs one day and notices a pattern.  The asset’s been going through the papers and cutting out crime information – murders and rapes mostly – and taping it on the back of their closet door.  Dates and locations are circled in ink, and as Bucky runs his eyes down the door, he sees similar incidents in the same towns represented in chronological order. 

The last clipping on the door is recent, just two days old.  It’s about a gruesome murder in Pershing County; the victim, a white male in his thirties, was stabbed multiple times, disemboweled, and shot through the mouth.  One of the last lines of the article reports that various items in the victim’s apartment suggested that he might be the Pershing County rapist suspected of attacking twelve women in the past six months, DNA testing pending. 

Bucky stares at the article and knows that DNA testing isn’t necessary when you have the asset’s surveillance skills.  He wonders if it was a quick kill, or if the asset played with the guy first. 

He adds some of his own notes to the strings of articles, patterns that he’s noticed and ideas, and a few days later, he notices that Axel and Yasha have done the same.  They never formally talk about it, but they all understand it. 

Bucky figures that, when the asset runs out of heinous criminals in Nevada, they’ll move on to play judge and jury elsewhere. 

 

Towards the end of October, the store is full of rumblings.  Gallagher Market has started enforcing quotas of crates to stock, and if the workers don’t fill their quotas during shift time, they have to stay late without pay or see their wages docked. 

People are furious, and rightly so.  Bucky sympathizes with all of them, but his main priority is helping out Malik and a few of the other young stockers and cashiers who want to know how to defend themselves from bullies at their school.  Bucky’s got a mind to just march into the school himself with a hit list (or send the asset), but he recognizes that it would create more problems than it solved.  So he talks to them before and after their shifts, showing them how to punch bags of rice and how to block hits from all different angles. 

He lets Bryana knee him in the groin one more time and then sends the teens to work.  He’s in the bathroom changing into a different shirt before his shift starts when Shareen knocks on the door and lets herself in. 

“This is the men’s room,” he informs her.  It doesn’t deter her; she crouches in front of him with a scheming grin. 

“Heard your boys took some hits when you were helping Bry learn how to keep that guy away from her,” she says admiringly, and Bucky quickly closes his eyes and leaves three fingers resting on the sink basin as her hands go to the button on his jeans. 

The next time he sees Yasha, he’s prepared to tease him about it, but Yasha is full of spit and fury. 

“It’s not fair how they can treat us like slaves,” he insists.  “I know that some of us can’t work legally, but most of the people here deserve benefits and 40-hour weeks, not to mention a fucking _living wage_.” 

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Bucky commiserates.  The asset stares at Yasha from where he’s sprawled on the couch. 

“Threaten the boss,” he suggests.  Then he straightens up.  “Let me do it.” 

“It’s not going to help.  It’s part of a chain, and there’s way more than one person making these calls.”

“Are things so shitty at all the stores in the chain?” Bucky asks.  Yasha pauses and wrinkles his brow. 

“I don’t know.  Now I want to find out.” 

Three days later, Bucky opens the notebook and sees the message from Yasha.

_We are unionizing – stronger as one!_

After that, they stop going to work because they’re on strike.  There are some protests in front of the store that Yasha handles for the most part, and Bucky’s role is to direct people to future meetings whenever they stop him on the street and ask him about the Gallagher Markets strike.  And people do stop him, because he’s getting recognized.  Suddenly, everyone in the community knows who Casey Jones is, and the exposure worries Bucky. 

For the most part, the response from the community is positive – it’s strange having people appreciate Bucky for reasons besides his fighting, but even he is impressed with Yasha’s capacity to organize this in only a few days.  Suddenly, they own a cell phone, and they’re constantly fielding calls and bringing Yasha to the top to talk about them.  There are signs stacked in the corners of the trailer – some handmade and some professional – and reporters want to talk to the man who exposed Gallagher Markets’ dirty secret. 

Of course, there’s negative response, too.  One week into the strike, a group of men in suits come to Bucky’s trailer.  They claim that they’re representing Gallagher Markets, and they threaten him in vague and paltry terms if he doesn’t back down. 

When they leave, Bucky laughs.  He laughs until he cries, face down on his bed and howling into his pillow, at their scare tactics.  For too many years, Bucky’s entire life was a series of threats, and they were all acted upon.  These puffed-up men with their suits and their legal jargon are like a mosquito threatening to bite a horse; they don’t have any power over him. 

No one has power over him.  It’s the lightest he’s felt in years. 

 

Shareen shows Bucky a YouTube clip of Yasha speaking at a rally, and that’s when Bucky knows it’s past time to leave.  He watches the video on her phone, seeing Yasha in a light he’s never fully appreciated before. 

‘We’re not asking for 401Ks and two weeks’ paid vacation!  We’re asking for basic workers’ rights which were established in 1937 with the Fair Labor Standards Act!  8-hour shifts, minimum wage, and basic insurance plans to help when our kids are sick!’ Yasha says on-camera to a chorus of cheers and boos.  Bucky isn’t sure what a 401K is, but he appreciates the nod to his generation. 

“You were incredible,” Shareen tells him with stars in her eyes, and Bucky kisses her lightly and tells her that he needs to take a nap before the thing later (he assumes there’s always a _thing_ later in Yasha’s movement, and he turns out to be right). 

As soon as she leaves, he packs the truck.  They have even more belongings this time – books, clothes, food, mugs – and he leaves some of it behind.  He sinks under but leaves a finger out to call himself back up, and after consulting with Axel quickly, they’re on their way. 

Yasha is heartbroken yet again, but even he admits that being on the Internet is too much exposure.  He leaves voicemails with other members of the fledgling union and with Shareen, and then he throws the phone over the rail of an overpass.  They drive west and trace the coast a few times, up and down the length of the country to shake off any tails, before stopping in Oregon in a town named Junction City. 

Like he told Axel, he can’t believe in anything mystical or divine anymore.  But looking back, the city name has a fateful quality to it. 

 

The night after Bucky gets to Oregon, he goes out to get food.  He annoys the cashier at McDonald’s because he wants all of the little sauces – it’s not his fault that the four of them have different preferences – but he finally gets everything he needs and comes back to their hotel for the night.  They haven’t decided yet if this is just a temporary stop, or if they should start looking for a job soon.  They’ll probably stay away from grocery stores for a while, and Bucky’s thinking he wants another job where he can read for several hours while eating candy. 

He sets the bag of food down on the shaky, round table by the door, and he takes off his coat as he prepares to eat his chicken nuggets. 

Then he’s being slammed backwards into the door by something dark and hulking.  He fumbles for the lights as his head throbs and his vision blurs temporarily with the concussion, but the thing that attacked him grabs his hand and twists it behind his back.  Bucky spirts curse words as the thing spins him around and pushes him against the door. 

Then he smells mint. 

His heart pounds as he struggles against the door, trying to push away from it as the thing behind him… _Steve_ fastens something around his waist.  It’s like a belt, and seconds later, Bucky feels his wrist locked into something metal. 

It’s a set of handcuffs especially for him.  He only has one hand, so he’s cuffed to his own waist. 

“Get off me, Steve,” he sputters wetly on the blood in his mouth.  He slammed his nose into the door and shattered it when Steve pushed him, and blood is flowing down his face and staining his shirt now. 

He’s only got a few more minutes with this concussion making him woozy, and then he can fight back and escape.  He’ll have to send the asset out without guidance, but this feels like the type of situation where the asset will know what to do.  Attack and extract. 

“Stop fighting!” Steve growls at him, which is ironic, because he’s the one who jumped Bucky in his own hotel room. 

Bucky struggles and then slowly stops, panting between Steve and the door.  He isn’t expecting Steve to fall for it, but Steve drops some of his guard. 

“Are you bleed-” he asks, sliding his fingers to the front of Bucky’s face before Bucky chomps down.  Steve grunts, and Bucky snaps his hips backwards then spins to his right.  There’s a window a few feet away, and he’s going to throw himself through it and send the asset out, but Steve grabs a gun from his waist and aims for him. 

“You wouldn’t,” Bucky promises.  And Steve pulls the trigger.

To be fair, a bullet doesn’t tear through Bucky’s skin and sinew, but he does feel a sting in his side.  He looks down to see a nasty, no doubt Stark-made dart sticking out of his side only centimeters from the site of the bullet wound the asset took saving Steve several months back. 

Betrayal tastes worse than the blood on his tongue, and he feels his muscles harden and his eyes water as he slowly sinks to his knees, then slumps against the TV stand. 

“Stark made it.  It’s a compound similar to the anesthesia he used on you before,” Steve tells him as he examines his injured fingers, seemingly unable to look at Bucky. 

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky says with a thick, uncooperative tongue.  “You’re not my friend.” 

“I am your friend,” Steve says, so earnest even in this fucked-up situation.  “I’m trying to help you, Buck.  I need you to let me help you, because we can’t trust you right now.  I know that seems strange and cruel, but I’ll explain.”  He comes closer, and Bucky struggles to combine the two pictures of Steve that his mind is giving him into one. 

Maybe the drug makes him bolder, or maybe he’s so clearly at the end of the line that he doesn’t care.  Suddenly, the secret that he’d turned himself inside out to keep from Steve spills out of his lips, easy as breathing. 

“You wanna explain to me about the four people in my head?  You wanna help me with them?” he slurs incredulously.  All four of Steve’s eyes widen, and Bucky laughs.  “You think I don’t fucking know about them?”

“Four,” Steve breathes. 

“Four,” Bucky confirms.  “Or did you miscount?”  Steve stomps over him and turns him by the shoulders so Bucky can look straight at him.  He keeps his hands there, eyes raking over Bucky like he expects to see confirmation of Bucky’s words on his physical person. 

“Which one are you?” Steve asks, deadly serious. 

“Sergeant James Barnes,” Bucky replies dutifully.  The drugs mix with the head injury, and he thinks it’s the right answer.  Or should he say Bucky? 

“Try again,” Steve practically sneers.  He holds his red, bruised fingers up and Bucky tries to inspect them.  “You bit me.  You’re not Bucky.”

“Okay, in my defense, you were attacking me.  And then you shot me,” Bucky protests blearily.  He shuts his eyes and slumps back over, but he doesn’t let himself drift back.  He wants to stay awake and feign unconsciousness while his body processes everything out and gets him back to his normal brain functioning, because he doesn’t want to have this argument with Steve when he’s like this.  Not when his brothers’ lives are at stake. 

Steve takes his pulse, and Bucky stays still.  Slowly, Steve lets out a breath, and Bucky looks through his eyelashes to see the tension drain out of Steve.  He shifts Bucky so he’s upright again, and then he kisses his forehead before pulling back and moving further into the room. 

Bucky can read his agitation in his pacing.  Several minutes later, Steve makes a phone call, and Bucky assumes Sam is on the other end. 

“Hey.  I found him.  Hotel room in Junction City, Oregon.  He’s subdued right now – Stark’s stuff knocked him out.”  Sam speaks for a moment, and then Steve answers.  “Yeah.  Yeah, he was in the truck people in Nevada said he had – red Chevy S-10.  Toll surveillance picked him up, and I followed him here.  No, they’re a few hours out.  They were too slow.  Okay, thanks.  Night.” 

Bucky continues to play dead until Steve gets nervous.  He comes back to Bucky and holds his hand in front of Bucky’s face.  His nose is crusty with dried blood, but there’s enough air coming out to calm Steve down. 

Bucky opens his eyes again and stares at Steve, feeling more centered.  He doesn’t try to move, because he doesn’t want another dart.  It’s looking less and less likely that he can escape from this, so he needs his wits about him.  He needs to talk Steve down.  He wonders briefly and wildly if Axel would be better at this, but he knows that Steve needs _him_ in order to understand. 

“Steve,” he says, and then more words trip out.  “I missed you.” 

“I missed you too,” Steve promises, cupping Bucky’s face in his hands.  “I couldn’t find you.  I thought the worst things had happened to you, every day.” 

“You wanted to hurt them,” Bucky says.  He won’t let Steve draw him in.  “I couldn’t let you do that.  I still won’t.”  Steve’s hands still, and he stares at Bucky’s face.

“Who are you?” he asks again. 

“I’m Bucky.” 

“No…no, I don’t believe you.  You’ve fooled me before,” Steve tells him.  He looks at Bucky like he doesn’t know him, and it stings. 

“How the hell do you expect me to prove it?” Bucky asks, because they have to deal with this obstacle before they can even talk about the others. 

The question stumps Steve.  He blinks several times and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. 

“I thought I’d know,” he finally says.  He looks distraught.  “Now that we know what it is, I thought I’d be able to tell the real you.” 

“I am the real me.  I’m Bucky,” Bucky repeats again.  Then he gets an idea.  “I can tell you something about me, or about you.  I’ve forgotten some stuff because it was 80 years ago, but I know the big stuff.  Ask me anything.”  Steve licks his lips and considers.  Bucky studies him, steely with nerves fluttering inside.  He’s just as stumped as Steve is if this doesn’t work.  His experience with his brothers has been so internal that he’s never had to prove something like this before. 

“How’d we meet?” Steve asks softly. 

“We were in the same class.  You got held back because you were sick, and Miss McGillicuddy made us seat partners,” Bucky tells him. 

“How’d you find out that I liked you?” Steve asks. 

“You told me first, because you were brave.  We were fourteen and fifteen.  We were watching my sister and she had these blocks,” Bucky recollects.  “They had letters on them, on all the sides.  And you spelt out, ‘I think I’m in love,’ and I asked you with who.  And then you had the ‘U’ block.  Fuck, Steve, your game,” Bucky laughs without meaning to.  Because it had felt so big and significant at the time – that he remembers – but now, looking back on their actions as babies nearly a century ago, he can’t believe some of it. 

“How’d we get together?” Steve asks, enraptured by the stories.  His guard is down, and Bucky could probably make another lunge for freedom, but he doesn’t. 

“Took a few years.  We were dumb.  I was dumb, and scared,” he amends.  “Behind Louie’s.  We danced.” 

“No, that’s not it.  We were already together then,” Steve corrects. 

“No, that is it.  We went to Louie’s to dance, and I took you out back and we waltzed.  You followed,” Bucky insists. 

“We took Mandy Coleman and Lizzie Buchanan to Louie’s after we’d been together for a few weeks, and you followed me out back because I was annoyed with how much attention you were giving them,” Steve argues. 

“ _No_ ,” Bucky pushes back, annoyed, and Steve speaks over him.  “Damn, Bucky, you forgot the first time we went to the docks.” 

“No, I didn’t, that was when we got _back_ together after breaking up after you almost slept with Lewis McCartin,” Bucky tells him.

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was!”

“No it wasn’t!” Steve practically yells, and then he catches himself and chuckles.  He looks at Bucky fondly, sifting through memories that they could never agree on anyway before the war.  His look hardens. 

“This still doesn’t prove anything.  You might be able to read Bucky’s mind.”  He sounds sad, like he really wants to uncuff Bucky and spat about their past more, maybe recreating a few of the better memories. 

They have plenty of bad ones to uncover – Steve had always been jealous about the girls Bucky dated even though he had to have known he was Bucky’s one and only, and Bucky had always panicked and blustered when Steve got too close to any known sexual deviance, namely other people like them. 

But weaved in with those bad memories, they were happy.  They were in love, and no matter how many years went by, Bucky looked at Steve and what he saw made him breathless.  From their awkward teenage fumblings to their lass kiss before Bucky died, Bucky counted his lucky stars in Steve’s freckles and held him like he’d fight the world if anything tried to take Steve away. 

He thinks about that last kiss, rushed and behind a snow-covered tree, freezing his balls off.  Steve still had shaving cream on his face, and they were barely upwind of Dum-Dum crouching in the bushes. 

“For luck,” Steve had mumbled into his mouth. 

“Luck,” Bucky had agreed, lazy and already thinking ahead to the logistics. 

And it was as perfect as all their other kisses, even though they were rushed and hiding and in an unideal spot.  Every kiss with Steve made Bucky’s heart clench. 

Even the kiss a year ago, when Bucky crept into Steve’s apartment and watched him, making sure.  Steve had kissed him and Bucky had frozen, barely moving against Steve’s lips.  And Steve had still tasted the truth and known that he was lying about not remembering Steve. 

It hits him like a jolt.  Steve’s kissed the others over the past year – the asset in the SHIELD prison, Yasha after their body was shot, and even Axel admitted to kissing him in New York to encourage him to be more affectionate with Bucky.  Steve’s kissed the others, and he had to have known something was wrong.  He’s the only person the asset has ever kissed, and this was before Yasha and Axel started finding lovers on the run.  Their inexperience must have come across to Steve.   

But Steve could tell when Bucky was lying when they kissed.  He knew him, and he could read Bucky’s tells on his lips like braille. 

Bucky surges forward and kisses Steve.  He tastes like dry blood and salt from the French fries he ate on the way back to the hotel.  Steve tastes like an energy drink, and Bucky wonders how long it’s been since he slept.

And it’s as perfect as all their other kisses, even though it’s gross and Bucky is Steve’s prisoner.  Steve gasps and cups the side of Bucky’s face, and Bucky runs his tongue over the dip behind Steve’s teeth that makes him shiver. 

He wants to kiss Steve indefinitely; he wants to make up for decades and decades of cells when he thought Steve was dead and he’d never have this again.  He’s mourned everything about Steve, including his kisses, and now he takes it all back.  He reclaims his grief and tears it up, swallowing a fraction of his pain off Steve’s tongue – because after all, Steve only had to grieve him for a few years.  His grief, and the meaning of this kiss for him, run much deeper. 

But he doesn’t want to bother Steve with that; instead, he wants to taste him.  He wants to feel Steve’s hugeness against him, and he wants to find traces of his little guy underneath this powerful jaw and thick neck. 

Steve pulls away long before Bucky’s had his fill; but he’s smiling, and that makes it okay.  Anything for Steve to smile at him instead of scowling and threatening. 

“You’re you,” Steve moans, and it takes Bucky a second to place his meaning.  When he does, some of the ecstasy of the kiss slips away. 

“I told you,” Bucky haughtily.

“You’re you – you’re not one of the alters.  I was so scared they’d have you locked down, you have no idea.”  Bucky freezes, but he can’t handle this like he did the last time. 

“What do you want to do to them?” he asks tonelessly.  He bites his lip, needing to hear the answer. 

“What?” Steve asks, confused.  It shouldn’t confuse him – it tells Bucky that Steve’s already made up his mind about this. 

“What do you want to do,” he asks again, “to my brothers?”  He sees Steve’s mouth trace the word ‘brothers,’ and then Steve visibly stiffens. 

“You don’t have any brothers, Bucky.  You have a sister, but not brothers.  These things in your head aren’t your family – do they talk to you?” 

“My brothers and I,” Bucky says, emphasizing the word, “have been through hell together.  We have been imprisoned since 1944, and we have had each other’s backs through shit that would have killed me on my own.”  He lowers his head to meet Steve’s eyes, because Steve’s staring at a spot on Bucky’s neck and scrunching his forehead like he’s thinking. 

“Ronaldo says there’s a way to integrate them,” Steve tries to tell him.  “She says you’re the dominant personality, but there’s a risk that one of them could take over.” 

“Their names are Axel, Yasha, and the asset,” Bucky tells him.  He can feel his eyes brimming with hot tears, because for some reason, talking about this is making him emotional.  He doesn’t talk to Steve about this – about what evil happened to him, and what good came out of it. 

“And I don’t care what it takes.  I’ll run away again.  I’ll go back to Russia.  I’ll find another master.  But you can’t force them to go deep,” he tells Steve, laying it all out on the table. 

Steve looks at him and breathes, and Bucky breathes back.  He can hear traffic sounds from outside the hotel, because it’s on a major road.  One of his neighbors is watching television, porn by the sound of the music.  But it’s very quiet here in this space, and the silence marks the moment where everything is about to change for Bucky and the others.  One way or the other, Steve’s not letting them go without a hell of a fight. 

Steve clearly has no idea what to do.  Ronaldo built him up to believe one thing, and Bucky isn’t conforming to it. 

“Can I have my hand free?” Bucky asks, and Steve shakes his head as if to clear it.  Looking doubtful, he nevertheless takes a device out of his pocket and reaches around Bucky’s back.  Seconds later, he hears a click and the cuff falls away. 

Bucky gets up slowly, avoiding rapid movements, and grabs the pad of paper by the hotel phone.  He doesn’t want to take out their actual notebook, because that might be too much for Steve.  But he isn’t sure how to convince Steve that the others aren’t a threat to his safety.

Unless Steve meets them and sees for himself how strong they are together. 

He writes on the pad ‘Introduce yourself to Steve and send me back – B.’  He sits back down on the floor next to Steve and puts the pad between them so it faces Bucky but Steve can see what it says. 

“Wait,” Steve says warily, but Bucky’s sinking down. 

Yasha and the asset are in the apartment arguing about the Russian sizing system versus the American sizing system. 

“Steve’s here,” Bucky tells them without preamble.  The asset flies to his feet like Steve’s an actual presence in their mind, and Yasha gasps. 

“How?” the asset growls.  Then he turns to Yasha.  “Your fucking YouTube video.” 

“It’s okay,” Bucky tries to promise.  “I think we can get him to come around.  He was able to recognize me, and I think I’m getting through to him that he can’t fuck with you.  But Axel’s going to call you out, and you need to show him that you’re not threats.  Be nice!” he yells at the asset disappears and Axel is suddenly standing beside him. 

“What.  The.  Hell,” Axel tells him. 

“What’d you say?” Bucky begs immediately. 

“I, ah, said my name was Axel.  I told him I was your older brother, and I was born in Karpov’s prison because you needed to go away.” 

Yasha disappears and the asset comes back.  Bucky asks him the same question.

“I told him I didn’t have a name and to fuck off.”  Bucky’s heart plummets.  “But I said I’d never hurt you, and I told him that I wouldn’t hurt him either unless it was necessary to protect you.  And I told him I was the one who got shot for him.” 

Bucky doesn’t get to find out what Yasha said, because he floats back to the surface.  It can’t have been more than a few minutes up here, but Steve looks stunned.  He’s licking his lips repeatedly and nodding in the way he does when he wants to understand something but it’s not coming to him.  He looks at Bucky like he’s expecting a fifth personality, but Bucky bends forward and kisses him again.  This kiss is shorter, but it’s apparently his calling card now.  Steve relaxes into it. 

“They had accents.  Well, two of them,” Steve says.  It’s probably the first thing his mind grabs onto, but it is a lot to take in. 

“I mean, I have an accent,” Bucky tells him, slipping from the careful Americana into the Slavic-tinged voice that he’s developed from years upon years in a Moscow basement.  It’s not very noticeable, but there are some words that he definitely has had to watch how he pronounces.  And now he doesn’t; now they can all stop constantly pretending. 

“How long have you known?” Steve asks next. 

“About them?  Pretty much the whole time they’ve been alive.  It took probably a few months to figure out Axel, but we knew about the others.  Axel wasn’t on purpose, but Yasha and the asset…they were very intentional.”

“How do you intentionally make an alternate personality?” Steve asks, laughing a little at the ridiculousness of the idea to relieve some of the tension. 

Bucky doesn’t laugh. 

“You do a lot of damage for a while.  Like, knifes and needles and water.  And as soon as the main personality breaks, you raise the new one how you want it.”  Steve isn’t smiling anymore. 

“God, that happened to you?”  Bucky nods.  “…twice?”  Bucky nods again, not trusting himself to speak.

“Bucky, how long did they do that to you?” Steve asks. 

“A long time.  Several years,” Bucky says eventually.  “But it got better when the asset was born.  Less pain, less time on top.  Because they had what they wanted.” 

“How long were you awake for?” Steve asks. 

“Awake?” Bucky clarifies, because ‘awake’ has several meanings for him. 

“Not frozen,” Steve says.  And that does make Bucky smile.  He can’t believe that story is still going around, and to hear the man who actually was frozen ask about it is surreal. 

“I was never frozen,” he tells Steve gently.  “Cryofreeze just meant that me, Yasha, or Axel were on top.  I think they started circulating that rumor to make him seem even scarier, or to hide us, or both.”  Steve looks stunned, and he reaches for Bucky. 

“You’ve been awake – alive – for all seventy of those years?” 

“Well, the others shared it.  I was in my head a lot.  But yeah,” he says as a thin tear makes its way down Steve’s cheek.  Bucky absently catches it on his finger.  “I’m pretty old.  I feel pretty old.  Even though my mind probably stopped aging too.” 

Steve pulls him in against his chest, and Bucky turns his face into the softness and warmth of Steve’s neck.  Somehow it makes it easier to talk about this. 

“Why, God, why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Steve asks above him.  He’s openly crying now, and the sound distresses Bucky as much as it calms him.  He’s always hated seeing Steve cry, but Steve’s crying _for him_ , and no one’s done that before.  Bucky’s had to shoulder all of this black pain and fear and anger over what started with Zola and continued into the new century, but now, he gets to share some of it with Steve. 

“I didn’t want to let on that they were living in me.  I knew no one would understand it, and they’d think I was crazy.  You’d think that, and I couldn’t stand that,” Bucky confesses. 

“You’re not crazy,” Steve says with determination. 

“Kind of am,” Bucky argues back.  He’s almost blithe about it now; he feels so warm finally confessing this to Steve. 

“You’re not crazy.  You have a disease that they know about now.  It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder.  They know how to work with it and cure it, Buck – you’re far from the only one.”  Bucky’s ears prick at the world ‘cure.’

“But the ‘cure’ is getting rid of the others?” he asks, defensive.  Steve seems to realize his error, and he tucks his nose against Bucky’s hair. 

“Yeah, that’s the cure.  But I know you don’t want that.  And they can’t make you do anything you don’t want – Ronaldo’s not like that.  We’ll figure something out,” he promises. 

It still sounds like Steve’s thinking about ways to make Bucky normal again, and that won’t work.

“I’m not going to be normal again, Steve.  Too much has happened.  I got really broken.  I’m still not clean from the stuff…and I’m not going to a looney bin.” 

“Apparently they’re not called looney bins anymore.  Actually, apparently they don’t really exist anymore like that,” Steve tells him with the practiced words of someone who’s researched.  “Listen, remember Nester from Brooklyn?  They took him away to an Asylum and never brought him back, and his kids stopped visiting him.” 

How could Bucky forget that?  It’s been the image in his head every time he imagined this conversation with Steve for decades, long before he knew Steve was actually alive to hear it. 

“Ronaldo said they don’t treat people like that anymore, and that it wasn’t really that helpful.  They did bad things to the mentally ill in our day – lobotomies and electroshock therapy.  But they know so much more now, and they don’t do that,” he promises. 

To Bucky, it sounds too good to believe.  Suspicious surgeries and electric jolts made up a considerable part of his time in captivity, and he can’t dismiss them that easily.  Still, it’s not like Steve to lie about something like this. 

Unless Steve really thinks he’s crazy, and he’s trying to appease him to draw him out. 

Steve must sense what he’s thinking, because he tips Bucky’s chin up to look at him. 

“I won’t hurt your brothers.  I won’t let anyone else hurt them, I swear.  But we have to find out more about this, Bucky,” he pleads.  “We have to know why this happened, and if there are any options to make sure you stay the dominant personality.” 

Bucky knows enough about how it happened to satisfy him indefinitely, and to be honest, he’s not worried about losing his spot as the dominant.  Maybe he already has – Axel’s unquestionably in charge now, and the asset is the most useful.  Even Yasha proved his salt recently – maybe he’s the direction that they’ll go next.  As long as Bucky get to see Steve, he’s not worried about it. 

He decides that he has to trust Steve.  If this is a scheme to lock him up and torture the others out of him, they’ll deal with it when it happens.  And if it isn’t, he doesn’t want to live with that suspicion of Steve hanging over his head.

He pushes against Steve, suddenly so overwhelmed with love for him that’s been frozen deep in Bucky’s bones for too long. 

“Mmmf,” Steve grunts as Bucky kisses him again.  He feels like he can’t stop – and he doesn’t have to stop.  This room is his for the next four days, and he specifically requested that none of the staff come in.  No one is coming, except.

Except he told Sam on the phone, ‘they’re a few hours out.’

“Who’s coming in a few hours?” Bucky asks.  Steve blinks at the change of pace and then frowns sharply, realizing that Bucky must have been eavesdropping. 

“SHIELD strike team.  I called them when I found you, and they’re supposed to be here in case you need to be subdued,” Steve says. 

“Do I need to be subdued?” Bucky asks with a raised eyebrow.  Steve hesitates, and then reaches for his phone. 

He tells his team to stand down, and Bucky gets up to wash the blood off his face.  He yanks off his t-shirt too, because it’s stained and stretched from their scuffle, and he comes back out to the room shirtless. 

The lights are still off, and they’ve been sitting on the floor for over an hour.  He doesn’t want to get back on the hard, scratchy floor – so he pulls Steve by the wrist over to the bed.  He sits back, pulling Steve to crawl over him, and lets Steve blanket him with that reawakening feeling of safety and trust and _Steve._

“Five hours ago, I was frantic and sleep deprived and going out of my head with worry for you,” Steve moans as Bucky’s hand traces the knobs of Steve’s spine underneath his t-shirt and flannel. 

“And now you’re here,” Bucky tells him quietly.  “Kiss me again.  I missed kissing you, a lot.”  Steve does, and it’s still the best feeling.  Bucky shifts underneath him so the warm skin of Steve’s stomach is pressed against his, and he runs his fingers through Steve’s hair.  It feels greasy, like Steve hasn’t been showering regularly.  Somehow, that makes his heart beat faster. 

He really was missed.  Steve really wasn’t glad to be rid of him and his problems.  Steve’s here now, and he knows, and Bucky can’t let his eyes shut because if he does, he might open them on an empty room and the remnants of a dream. 

It briefly makes him regret leaving, but he doesn’t think that would have worked.  These months have been so good for him and the others – they needed to find a way to be free without Steve, and they did it.  They met a lot of people, learned how to live in this century, and fucking _saved_ people – from bullies, from rapists, and from corporate greed. 

He’s proud of them. 

And he wants to actually be rewarded for it.  For the first time in memory, he feels like he deserves something good. 

“Damn,” Steve breathes against his mouth as Bucky’s fingers slip under his waistband.  He slides his fingers down Steve’s soft, taut ass and rubs his finger over Steve’s hole.  It’s as warm and responsive as he remembers, and he laughs breathlessly as Steve groans and lifts his head up. 

“This feels like a bad idea.  We shouldn’t do this right away,” Steve mutters as Bucky kisses softly at his neck. 

“It’s a good idea.  I am the only one in this body who likes sex but isn’t having it,” Bucky assures him.  Steve seems taken aback by that for some reason, but Bucky nips at his neck and slides his hand to Steve’s front.  He pulls Steve’s buttons and zipper open and pushes his hand inside, getting his fingers around Steve’s cock to the sound of Steve choking on his name.  He’s hot and blood-hard, and even though Bucky’s forgotten precisely what Steve likes, his muscle memory kicks in.

Then another memory covers it, and Bucky’s yanking his hand back and gasping on something he thought was long over.  He thrashes to get Steve off him, and Steve quickly gets the message and rolls to his side. 

“What’s wrong?” he demands as Bucky gasps and flounders, trying to get up and then trying to curl up protectively without really consciously deciding to move.  Steve gets a hand on his arm and he kicks, hearing more words pour out of Steve’s mouth, but it’s hard to hear over the way his skin is crawling.  He’s seconds away from screaming for Axel, and then it fades. 

Steve is staring at him from the other side of the bed, hands up, looking like he knows all too much. 

“Who?” he asks, inner conflict hardened into the lines of his face.  Bucky doesn’t bother trying to be cagey. 

“Vasily Karpov,” he answers, hoping Steve won’t ask more follow-up questions. 

He doesn’t; he fastens his pants and inches his way over to Bucky, looking like he’s trying not to spook a scared rabbit. 

Bucky doesn’t want to be the rabbit, and he doesn’t want to have this wall in his brain that he never knew existed when it came to sex.  He was able to sleep with Natalia without issue, but he couldn’t touch Steve.  And that’s the height of unfairness. 

The back of his neck burns with embarrassment, but he doesn’t want to let Karpov take this from him.  Buried deep inside him is the old Bucky, who was an expert at finding ways to have sex with Steve that didn’t exacerbate his injuries or his sicknesses, or in wartime when privacy was as rare as whiskey. 

“Lie down,” he orders Steve, and Steve does it even though he looks like his mind is still racing with unasked questions.  Bucky swings a leg over him and tips his head down to kiss him again, and when they’ve built up a rhythm with their mouths and their hands on each other’s necks and shoulders, he starts to rub his groin against Steve’s. 

It’s hard to get friction through their pants, but it works.  Their skin isn’t touching, and Bucky’s on top, and it doesn’t trigger anything.  He grinds down harder and swallows a moan off Steve’s lips, and Steve grabs the back of his neck and squeezes it as he pushes harder and faster. 

It’s good when he comes – better than he expects it to be with clothing and no actual penetration.  Steve follows seconds behind him, leaning his head back and exposing the cords of his neck on a long moan.  Bucky licks at them, fascinated by the way they flex, and lets himself float down from the tingling aftershocks. 

Steve goes to the bathroom to clean himself up, and Bucky just shucks his bottoms off and replaces them with a pair of sweatpants they bought from K-mart in Missouri.  Steve comes back in and collapses beside Bucky, and Bucky turns to spoon him, ignoring his size and remembering the way Steve’s shoulders used to fit under his arm. 

“So, we haven’t done that since we were still in our teens,” Steve comments. 

“Nope.  We did it in France once; literally had thirty seconds before Morita came back into the tent,” Bucky corrects.  Steve makes a sound that could be agreement or dissent, and Bucky thinks he’s drifting off. 

A minute later, though, Steve’s voice carries back to him. 

“Can I ask more questions about…them?”

“Sure?” Bucky echoes his tone.  “What do you want to know?”

“Axel said he was your older brother, but you’re obviously the oldest.  Are they different ages?”

“Yeah.  Well, we’re all old men in terms of experience, but I don’t think we’ve aged mentally or physically.  I was in my twenties when Zola gave me the serum, so that’s where I stopped.  Axel’s a little older, probably late thirties or early forties.  Yasha’s young – eighteen or nineteen I think.  And the asset doesn’t have an age.” 

“Or a name,” Steve says tentatively. 

“I tried to give him a name in the seventies.  It didn’t stick.  He’s not really interested in a typical name.” 

“What name did you give him?” Steve asks. 

“George.  Stupid,” Bucky berates himself.  He can practically feel Steve blinking even though he’s behind him. 

“You named a cold-blooded killer…after your dad?” he asks. 

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?  Name your kid or whatever after your dad,” Bucky protests. 

“Is he your kid or your brother?” Steve asks, confused. 

“I don’t know; both.  He and Yasha feel like both,” Bucky tells him.

“And he’s who I fought in Washington?” Steve asks after a minute. 

“Yes, but he didn’t know that you were you.  We thought you were a copycat, and we were pissed,” Bucky defends the asset. 

They talk for hours.  Steve has more questions about the others – what they’re like, when he’s met them, and who the hell likes jelly on his sandwiches. 

He tells Bucky more about…about DID, and how it’s understood now.  It sounds so farfetched that there are case studies about this very volatile, very secretive thing in Bucky’s head, but Steve tells him that he isn’t a typical DID patient. 

“Because you guys can talk, and coordinate,” he says.  “It made it hard to see that there were more than one of you.  You tricked us,” he tells Bucky. 

“I know,” Bucky says smugly. 

“You’re a jerk,” Steve reminds him. 

They talk about a file that Steve somehow got his hands on.  He has more questions about Cryofreeze, about the attempted brainwashing, about Bucky’s serum, and about their first escape attempt. 

They talk about Natalia.  They talk about Sharon.  Bucky tells Steve that Natalia was Yasha’s love, not his, and Steve tells him that he slept with Sharon once and then they decided to stay just friends, long before Bucky was in the picture. 

They keep talking.  Even though Steve’s more tired, Bucky is the first to drift off.  He wakes up a few minutes after it happens, and Steve tells him he’s just been talking to Yasha.  He sounds awed when he says it, but not disgusted or horrified. 

So Bucky falls into real sleep thinking that _maybe_ there’s a chance this won’t all go to pieces on him. 

 

* * *

 

In the morning, Steve still has a million questions. 

But it doesn’t matter if he asks them today, or tomorrow, or next week.  Because he can ask them, and Bucky will answer them.  The ball of tension he’s been carrying in his stomach for a year disappears in his sleep, and he wakes up feeling like he’s slept on a firm mattress for the first time in ages. 

He turns over to see Bucky still asleep beside him.  His hair is standing up on one side, and his mouth is open slightly in his sleep. 

Steve kisses him, then freezes.  For all he knows, Bucky isn’t who’s going to wake up next to him. 

And that’s something he hasn’t gotten past.  He knows rationally that Bucky has this disorder; he knows in his heart that Bucky looks at his other personalities like people and that he’s willing to go to any length to protect their autonomy in his own body. 

And he knows that, if he’s going to keep Bucky in his life, he needs to accept the other three.  He’s willing to try, certainly.  It’s just…surreal.  Bizarre. 

It’s FUBAR.  Fucked up beyond all recognition, to the extreme.  It could be anyone in Bucky’s body right now, and Steve doesn’t know how to politely go about finding out if he can kiss him, if he can stay near him, or if he needs to back the hell away. 

He doesn’t know how this is going to work.  But he’s already in a better place with Bucky than he was yesterday, and that’s worth a lot of fumbling and frustration as he figures it out. 

Bucky opens his eyes slowly, and then he’s fully awake as he sees Steve tentatively staring at him. 

“Hello,” Steve says formally and cautiously. 

“It’s me, you fucking punk,” Bucky tells him.  His voice is rough with sleep, and the seam of the pillowcase is indented on his cheek. 

And Steve falls forward to kiss him, confusion fading in the face of what he knows. 

Bucky, Bucky, _Bucky._

In DC, Bucky sits grudgingly through several long, vulnerable sessions with Ronaldo’s colleague, Dr. Samson.  It’s not that Ronaldo’s been fired or taken off his case; she did the best she could for several months with an incredibly uncooperative patient. 

But Bucky needs a clean slate – all four of them do. 

So Samson’s been brought in to work on building trust with them from the ground up.  He spends a lot of time talking to Bucky about the techniques he wants to try, how they work, and why they might be able to help Bucky manage the symptoms he finds most distressing. 

“I don’t have symptoms,” Buck stubbornly maintains.  But Steve thinks of him freezing and flashing back on the hotel bed when he touched Steve, and he knows that the alters are only part of it.  If anything, maybe they’ve been helping Bucky deal with all of the other things Samson says he might have…depression, anxiety, PTSD, and a sleep disorder caused by his overactive mind, among other things. 

And if his alters can help him deal with those, that’s proof enough for Steve that they’re not wrong or evil.  But he wants Bucky to be able to deal with them on his own, too. 

Steve gets better at reading the cues of who’s whom.  The asset is the mood he identified as angry; Yasha is the nicer mood.  The middle mood is actually a combination of Bucky and Axel, but they’re different enough when Steve gets to know Axel.  Axel’s an optimist where Bucky is not; he also is more conscientious and less abrupt, and he’ll laugh at the jokes that Bucky says are dumb. 

He messes up all too frequently, though.  He mistakes Yasha for the asset and ignores him all afternoon one day.  Another time, he assumes that Axel is Bucky, and he gives him a free show when he walks from the shower to his bedroom without bothering with a towel. 

It’s a strange way to live, maybe, but no stranger than their past lives together.  And this life is freer, with more possibilities. 

So he’ll learn the others.  He’ll get over the strangeness.  And in time, this will feel normal. 

He doesn’t know how much time it will take – a year or two, or maybe more? 

He’s signed on for a lifetime. 

 

Yasha’s uncharacteristically grumpy after a session with Samson, and he buries himself in a book instead of helping Steve get dinner ready.  Steve ruffles his hair when he asks him to come to the table, and Yasha follows quietly.  He stabs his green beans with more force than necessary, and Steve wracks his brain to try to remember if Yasha likes vegetables or not. 

Hell, he needs to make a chart. 

Midway through the meal, Yasha, puts his fork down and closes his eyes.  Steve recognizes this for what it is now, so he’s prepared when the man across from him lets his shoulders droop from their ramrod posture and opens his eyes with a glint of amusement. 

He’s not surly any more, and he picks up the fork with a different grip and resumes eating. 

Axel?  Bucky?  Axel.  Asset?  It’s like roulette, guessing one and hoping he’ll get it right. 

“Bucky?” he asks tentatively.  The man sighs, dramatizing his displeasure, and shakes his head.  “Axel.” 

“Hey,” Axel greets him.  They talk about the asset a little, how eager he is to suit up with the Avengers again and how he hates therapy more than the rest of them combined. 

“And he’s the most well-adjusted one,” Axel tells him.  He thinks it’s supposed to be a joke, so he laughs, even though the asset still makes him uncomfortable.  He makes the whole team uncomfortable – someone so in love with causing pain shouldn’t be a candidate for the Avengers, but on the other hand, it’s probably the best way to direct his energies. 

They watch some of the playoff game after dinner even though neither of them are particularly interested in football, and Steve ends up calling Sam to explain some of the more intricate rules on speakerphone. 

Axel goes into his room and shuts the door after a while, and Steve puts the phone to his ear and chats idly with Sam about the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life that come easily when you know someone.  He doesn’t really have that with the alters yet, but he’s trying. 

He’s getting ready for bed when Axel slips into his room and bounces on the edge of his bed.  Steve raises an eyebrow, and then he looks twice.  Maybe it isn’t Axel.  Maybe it’s Bucky.  But it could also be Yasha.  Because sometimes-

“Me,” Bucky clarifies, rolling his eyes. 

“I was about to guess that,” Steve defends himself, bending down to peck him on the lips.  He straightens up and Bucky leans against his chest, resting his his forehead against Steve’s skin and probably just feeling his heart beat and his lungs expand. 

He rests a hand on the back of Bucky’s head and stands there for several minutes, letting the both of them unwind and just breathe together.  Eventually Bucky lifts his head, and they stare at each other. 

“Sometimes I really hate not knowing it’s you,” Steve mumbles to him.  When Bucky looks at him curiously, he hurries to clarify.  “I have nothing against them, but I just.  Hate looking at you and not knowing.”

“You’ll get it,” Bucky promises him confidently, tracing his fingertips up Steve’s side and leaving muscle spasms in their wake.  He has no grounds to stand on, because no one’s ever perfected the art of telling the four of them apart before, but he sounds like he believes his own words. 

“How?” Steve asks, somewhat petulantly. 

“You just will,” Bucky promises.  Then he kisses Steve’s chest, and Steve’s doubts are nothing in the face of Bucky’s trust. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll finish the third and final part in this series soon – after all, a chasm is a gap between two things. I’m reluctant to leave this verse that I love so much, but I definitely owe it to the amazing readers who have stuck by since this barely had any hits. Let me finish revising my Big Bang fic, and then part 3 will be my top priority. I’ll probably talk about it on [tumblr](http://skyisgray.tumblr.com/), if you’re interested in the interim. Thanks again.


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